


Death Takes A Holiday: Civilization Ends at the Waterline

by LyraNgalia, rude_not_ginger



Series: Death Takes A Holiday [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Action/Adventure, Airplanes, Canon-Typical Violence, Deductions, F/M, Gen, Great Hiatus, Guns, Gunshot Wounds, Hospitalization, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, Innuendo, Medical Procedures, Murder Mystery, Mutual Masturbation, Mystery Stories, Organized Crime, Post-Reichenbach, References to Airplane Crashes, Vaginal Fingering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-10-04
Packaged: 2018-01-24 16:24:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 58,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1611650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LyraNgalia/pseuds/LyraNgalia, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rude_not_ginger/pseuds/rude_not_ginger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having escaped London with Mycroft Holmes still unaware of their presence and a bullet wound courtesy of Sebastian Moran, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler make for the tropics, for a secluded island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. But will their partnership be tested by their mutual distrust or Sherlock's mostly untreated shoulder wound?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. An Unexpected Mystery

**Author's Note:**

> Please see [_Death Takes A Holiday: In the Shadow of the Black Mountain_](http://archiveofourown.org/works/694742) for notes/explanations on the peculiarities of this fic's writing style.

The airplane is cool, but Sherlock still has the air blowing down on him from his seat. It's making the sweat on his brow feel _fantastic_ , but it isn't taking away from his underlying concern that something isn't quite right with his shoulder. Of all of the ignorant things to have happen. His side wound has been healing since Montenegro quite well, but this shoulder---no, he won't worry about it. He needs to focus on what's next.  
  
"7B," he says to his companion. "Welsh. His anniversary gift to the both of them. She wanted to go somewhere less tropical, he didn't care."  
  
This has been an excellent distraction. Few would play this sort of a game with him, and even fewer might be able to hold their own. The stewardess with the newly colored hair walks past them, offering him another ginger ale. He takes it and savors the cool liquid for a moment.  
  
Their last flight west together was significantly less...strained. He would normally not notice such a thing, but his pain and the strange tension that's settled between them since London hasn't vanished with the London rain.  
  
John Watson also hasn't updated his blog about his wedding. Sherlock feels as though he's being punished.  
  
  
The child sitting directly behind her had not kicked the seat back in at least twenty-seven minutes, and Irene sat comfortably (for the moment) in hers, her eyes half-closed. Occasionally she'd open them fully, to glance at a flight attendant or a particular passenger if his deduction was interesting enough.  
  
For the most part, her mind is busy, trying to figure out how best to maneuver Moran into the place that she wanted him without risking what had happened on Baker Street again. A part of her, too, is discarding contingencies, whether she could risk dosing him with something else if the cough became worse, something to keep him unconscious long enough to have him admitted to a hospital for treatment. She almost regrets having used the most obvious and effective means of that in Las Vegas.  
  
"27C," she murmurs back, seemingly half-asleep. "Prima ballerina with a penchant for exhibitionism. Lost her last leading role because she'd been caught in the rafters during intermission."  
  
  
"Obvious from her kneecaps," he agrees. The healing bruises there, coupled with the not-so-healing bruised ego that her face displays. He turns back to the Woman and gives her a small smile. "But with _whom_ was she caught?"  
  
The attendant walks by again, and Sherlock's elbow knocks over his ginger ale, spilling it across the aisle. The attendant turns to look at him with a look of pure irritation, before slipping back into her customary wide, apologetic smile. She offers him another drink and goes about tidying his mess.  
  
  
"A member of the chorus," she answers immediately. "She's more upset by the fact that she'd been caught with someone so obviously beneath her than by being caught at all."  
  
The clatter of the plastic cup makes her open one eye and look at him. "If you were anyone else, I'd accuse you of having done that on purpose to get a better look at her backside."  
  
  
"Her thighs, actually," he says. "There's a birthmark on the lower part of her thigh, right above the knee. I thought I'd seen it when we first arrived, but I had to make certain."  
  
He looks to the Woman with a short sigh. "We're traveling with an old friend."  
  
He takes a drink of his ginger ale, and finds the need to cough take over again. He turns his head away from her.  
  
  
"Whe--" Her question is cut off by his cough, and Irene waits for a moment, a count of five, before opening both eyes and turning to look at him fully. "Third time in the last hour, isn't it?"  
  
  
He nods in between the cough. Once he swallows it back, he takes another drink.  
  
"I imagine it's not contagious. Bullet wounds rarely are."  
  
  
She arches an eyebrow at his answer. More at his not-answer and the way he swallows back the cough. "And three times in an hour is hardly worth qualifying as 'worse'?" she answers drily. "I'm not suited to playing nursemaid, you realize."  
  
  
"I would never expect you to," he replies. "Though I imagine there's a comment to be made regarding 'bedside manner'."  
  
And that is just about as far as 'lewd humor' goes for Sherlock Holmes. At least in this state of mind.  
  
"However excellent your observational skills are at my health, Woman, you are missing what is obvious," he says.  
  
  
A twitch of her lips at his comment. It is utterly unexpected, and time and place considered, her response is almost a laugh. "If it is that obvious, I'm certain you're quivering with excitement to tell me what it is you think I've missed."  
  
  
"This entire holiday hasn't been easy, Woman," he says. "I'm not making this easy, either."  
  
He smirks again, though it's much more affectionate. " _Think._ "  
  
And he looks from her over to the air hostess he'd just been eying a moment ago.  
  
  
Her eyes narrow, though it doesn't stop the smile that is again tugging at the corner of her mouth. Affectionate or no, he's baiting her, challenging her, and she knows it. Knows that _he_ knows she'll know it, but that she won't be able to resist. They are far too well suited to each other in some respects.  
  
Still her gaze follows his, and she scrutinizes the flight attendant in question. Dyed hair, crisply pressed uniform, expensive tastes especially for expensive wines, and experimenting. Judging by the look she was giving a woman three rows up, quite the voracious appetite, as evidenced by the way she was tugging at her scarf...  
  
Her brow furrows, and Irene recalls the nervous flight attendant, dead by the hand of a woman shorter than herself. She isn't certain if the height is correct, not without walking past, but she gives Sherlock a sidelong look. "The dead flight attendant on your friend's table?"  
  
  
"It's uncanny, isn't it?" he says. "Down to the birthmark on her leg. I'd noticed it on the table and on the airplane."  
  
This is good. He needs this, this sort of mental stimulation, far more than any hospital Nassau could offer. He looks back to the Woman.  
  
"I think I'm going to like this flight," he says.  
  
  
Irene considers the flight attendant again, taking in the line of her legs, the curve of her spine, the sweep of her hair as she makes her way down the aisle before settling back in her seat, eyes once against half-closed.  
  
The child sitting behind her begins kicking her seat and Irene takes a deep, slow breath. "Are you admitting that you hadn't known precisely that she'd be working this flight when you acquired tickets?" she asked, the smile on her lips softening her words, making the question almost playful.  
  
  
"Considering I distinctly remember seeing her on a slab in London," he says, turning back to her with a slight grimace. "I'd say _no._ "  
  
So what is she doing here? And how? Sherlock was rarely wrong when identifying the dead. In fact, his one error came from whoever took the place of Irene Adler that Christmas in Bart's morgue. His home away from home, as Mycroft had so pleasantly put it.  
  
"How and why," he says. "How is she still alive, and why this airline? Why a different airline than her last?"  
  
  
The child keeps kicking, and Irene is starting to regret not taking Sherlock up on his suggestion on their flight into London to visit a chemist's. The thought makes her laugh, a little. She rarely cared about the people around her, but she expected that particular bit of disregard was entirely his influence.  
  
"She was worried last time. Maybe it was the airline," she suggests. "That or she has a twin. Well, had."  
  
"Duplicated birthmarks is very rare," he says. "Facial features are also rarely 100% identical."  
  
The air hostess doesn't even seem remotely worried now. More irritated than anything else. He looks upwards, counting the seating rows.  
  
"New hair, new airline, and a new attitude and _if you don't stop kicking that chair I will come back there and tear off your feet._ " His last words are hissed, low and angry. The mother, ignoring her son's antics, suddenly takes out her earphones. Sherlock resumes his conversation with the Woman.  
  
"We need to see what's in her breast pocket."  
  
  
Her eyes remain half-closed, but her smile deepens at his response to the boy's antics. "I'd accuse you of playing the gentleman again, but I doubt anyone would consider threatening idiotic children gentlemanly in any sense."  
  
She shifts in her seat, and her arm brushes against his. "And was that a request or a metaphorical 'we'?"  
  
  
"I'm hardly able to be subtle in my current state," he says. It's the closest he'll come to admitting he's not certain he'll be able to walk far.  
  
"And besides." He smirks. "You're out of practice. She'll be a challenge."  
  
  
She opens her eyes at that and gives him a deeply unamused look, though the effect is ruined by the answering smirk on her own lips. He knows exactly how she'd react to _that_ , and she knows that she won't resist. She could, she reminds herself, if she really thought it was important to.  
  
"Trying to bait me now to get what you want," she murmurs. "Sure it won't backfire on you?"  
  
  
"If I was the jealous sort, I might worry about that," he says. "As it is..."  
  
He glances over his shoulder, back towards the opposite end of the plane. The air hostess has her things back there, he thinks. So long as the Woman can distract her (and for all of his teasing, he has no doubt that she _can_ in ways that the air hostess will thank her for), he can look back there. His shoulder protests. He ignores it.  
  
  
"I could just refuse to help and watch you stew," she completes for him. There's no chance of that, of course. Well, very little chance. The flight is long, there is only so much sleep she can feign, and the tension of playing nursemaid and ensuring he isn't about to fall over and cough up blood is starting to weigh on her. Indulging in a bit of play would cure several of those problems, and she is, admittedly, curious about the flight attendant.  
  
She catches him glancing towards the back of the plane and makes to rise. "I'm not telling you how long I'll be."  
  
  
"I would never expect you to," he says. "Just aim for 'a while'."  
  
A cough threatens again, and he turns his head to keep from coughing in her direction. He feels a little dizzy from holding it in.  
  
It's not so much that he doesn't want her to worry. More, he doesn't want her to be distracted by him.  
  
  
He turns away from her to hide the cough and a little of the tightness returns, lingering at the corner of her mouth. She's counted the coughs, of course, had told him so, but she'd also been watching, keeping track of the number of times he's turned away from her to hide them.  
  
She's already distracted by him, by the games they play, by all the things they never actually say but that linger in the spaces between anyway. The worry, however, is new. Though if she were honest with herself, she would recognize that it had been there since Las Vegas, an awareness that steadily refused to be dislodged.  
  
Still, she gives him a skeptical look, as if the suggestion is wholly unnecessary. "Try not to get us arrested," she retorts, stepping into the aisle and making for the flight attendant with casual, measured paces, as if she's simply pacing the aisle, stretching her legs.  
  
  
He sits and waits for her to step away, before resuming his coughing, covering it up with one of the complimentary napkins given with his drink. He pulls the napkin back, and there is a blotch of blood. He crumples it into his pocket. Nothing to think about now. If only he wasn't in so much pain.  
  
He rises from his seat and moves to the back, as though to use the lavatory. Instead, he steps a little further, back to where the curtain hides the various hostess's things. It doesn't take long to uncover which purse is hers. The bright pink one belongs to the blonde with the bubblegum colored lip gloss, the sleek leather to the severe looking American hostess, and the final to the one currently being seduced by the Woman.  
  
He unzips the top of the purse and begins prodding through it.  
  
He only barely has enough time to react as a figure looms behind him and a broken bottle comes down towards his head.


	2. House of Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Secrets begin to unravel as the Woman and the Consulting Detective approach Nassau, but whose secrets are they, and will their growing mysteries survive the trip?

As she heads up the airplane aisle towards the flight attendant currently rearranging things in the galley, Irene realizes that she's tense, that the tension that should have left, should have sloughed off her as they left London is still there, that she is still waiting for something to go wrong, something to happen. And the knowledge that it is still there irritates her, because she knows exactly why she is tense, what--no _who_ \-- she is worried about.  
  
And even though this is a pleasant distraction, a challenge to play the game as she murmurs something inconsequential and inviting to the flight attendant (definitely very curious, though not as interested in women as she had thought back on the plane into London), that tension, that worry _lingers_ in the back of her mind and Irene finds herself thinking of what it would take to find a safe hospital in Nassau and how to send him there even if one could be found.  
  
It irritates her, even as the dead-but-not flight attendant turns back to Irene with a speculative smile, as Irene rested cool fingertips on the other woman's hand. The distraction is exactly what she needs, but even the challenge of the flight attendant (she liked candles, hot wax on warm skin, that would be problematic on a plane) can't shake the tension coiling at the base of her skull.  
  
  
The man is not big, but he's got well-coiled muscles and knows how to throw a punch. Fortunately, even injured, Sherlock is very skilled at hand-to-hand combat. He catches the other man's wrist and twists the bottle out of it. He takes a kick to the stomach, and then gives a solid headbutt.  
  
The other man collapses.  
  
"Moron."  
  
He pulls the curtain closed and leans over the man, going immediately for his pockets. Wallet, keys, passport. No weapons, that must be where the bottle came in. However, tucked into his breast pocket is a nearly empty tube of toothpaste. That's wrong, Sherlock thinks. That much toothpaste is not allowed by flying standards. He twists the tube open and inhales. Strong scent, but not at all minty. His eyes widen. Explosives.  
  
"Someone's been a very bad boy," he says. He looks over to the purse. "And it's all because of her. Why?"  
  
  
Irene is becoming more and more convinced the flight attendant in question isn't the same woman. The resemblance is uncanny, but this woman's likes are subtly different, more adventurous, more voracious than the nervous flight attendant of before. The woman kisses her back, skilled and eager, and Irene takes the opportunity to press her against the bulkhead, to hike up her skirt and run a hand along the birthmark that Sherlock had mentioned.  
  
The thought of the consulting detective brings her mind back to Nassau, to hospitals and wet painful coughs, and Irene shoves that thought away, saving it for later, and feels a trace of powder against her fingertips. Not a birthmark then, makeup? Good quality, something meant to mimic a birthmark. But why go to the trouble of creating one when one could simply--  
  
The puzzle pieces begin to fall into place and her hand tightens in the flight attendant's hair, the pleasure of the game a shot of warm liquid down her spine. The flight attendant, in response, gasps out loud.  
  
  
The unconscious man is deposited, rather unpleasantly, in a lower cabinet. Sherlock would have simply deposited him in the lavatory, but a coughing fit takes him over, and his arm is far too stiff and sore for that. Cabinet it is, and he shoves a chair in front of it.  
  
He goes back to the purse and digs through it, more quickly this time. A passport. No, two passports. Two passports. Two passports with the same name but different places stamped onto them. His mind whirls a bit. Why? He turns the purse over and runs his hand along the side of the leather. He peels back a clasp, and it opens, revealing carefully-wrapped jewelry.  
  
"Interesting." More than the jewelry, there is a carefully-wrapped bottle of medication. Cymbalta. Used to treat chronic pain, depression, anxiety, and nervous behavior. He thinks about the air hostess on the slab. The way her nails were perfectly formed, natural and smooth. And then the hostess here, with carefully rounded tips to her nails. Breaking a habit, it appears. A habit that might ruin a cover.  
  
He tucks the jewelry in his pocket and snaps the purse closed before heading back to his seat. The Woman still hasn't returned. He finds himself smirking at that. She never did let him down.  
  
  
She returns ten, nearly fifteen minutes after she leaves, with the flight attendant's mobile number (and the employee identification card from her breast pocket) in her pocket. There is no telltale smudge of lipstick on her lips or lock of hair out of place, but Irene's eyes are bright with familiar pleasure.  
  
She climbs around him to slip into her seat and shows him her hand, where the makeup from the flight attendant's false birthmark lingers on her fingertips. "You had trouble?"  
  
  
"A bit," he admits. "Nothing I can't handle."  
  
He takes her hand and looks at the makeup, raising an eyebrow. "Noticed her nails?" he asks. "Bitten all her life, but she's been taking care of them within the last few years. Obsessively so."  
  
  
Her brow furrows, and she adds that to what she already knows. She nods. "Because the dead one did. They're not the same. The one in London had a monogamous streak. This one doesn't."  
  
She smirks a little at that.  
  
  
"I could tell," he says. "If she were more monogamous, it might've taken you an extra twenty minutes." There is no doubt in Sherlock's mind that the Woman is capable of seducing almost anyone she has an inclination to seduce. After all, Sherlock Holmes, who had self-proclaimed that he'd never begged for anything in his life, had begged at her mercy. And, in all likelihood, would do it again if the situation permitted.  
  
"She has almost two million dollars in jewelry in her purse," he says. "Someone else knew she had it there, too. Probably the people who killed her sister. And since she's not the brains of the operation, she's got nowhere to go. But she's not nervous. Why?"  
  
  
She gives him an affronted look at the twenty minute remark, though the illusion is ruined by the implication in his words that he recognizes and admits that she _could_. Instead, she rubs her fingers together, contemplating the fine makeup lingering on her fingertips.  
  
"Either because she doesn't realize her sister is dead, or because she knows she's supposed to draw them out," Irene muses. She arches an eyebrow, and makes a mental note about the jewelry without seeming to show interest in it. "Normally the one who had the birthmark would have covered it up, not the other way around. But they wanted people to dismiss the idea completely."  
  
  
"Same with the nails," he says. "Easier to bite and mar good nails than go on an antianxiety medication to cessate a nervous tic like biting."  
  
He looks to her fingertips, to the high-quality makeup there. "The one trying to kill her wasn't highly paid. No glass weaponry, no expensive plastic guns. Just a beer bottle."  
  
  
She's surprised by that. "Sloppy for trying to kill someone with a sophisticated disguise," she says. A pause, as a thought occurs to her and Irene frowns, brow furrowing. "Are you sure he was trying to kill her?"  
  
  
"No, but he had explosives," he says. "A small tube of them. Why he'd risk bringing something like that on a plane would----"  
  
Actually, it would make a lot of sense. The sooner the explosives were installed to when they wanted to detonate them, the more effective they would be.  
  
"Unless they weren't being planted for her," he theorizes. "Do you know what your contact in the web looks like?  
  
  
The mention of explosives makes Irene frown, a new tension growing at the back of her skull. The fact that it was a small amount didn't mean much, not in the right place, and the unpredictability of it makes her nervous, and her fingers drum an unconscious rhythm against the armrest.  
  
The answer to his question is on her tongue, but Irene catches herself and swallows it back, giving him a calculating look as she considers it. She discards possibilities, weighs what he'd gain in knowledge by the answer. She reminds herself that this cannot last, and she needed Moran alive and not cut down as part of Sherlock Holmes' house cleaning of the spider's web. It feels strange, almost like a betrayal to even consider it, but she reminds herself that they keep secrets from each other all the time. That this is no different, that it explicitly isn't a betrayal because she answers with the truth.  
  
Eventually, she nods. "Of course."  
  
  
The hesitation is brief, barely perceptible, but Sherlock notices it. She's keeping something from him, though that's something she always does. Their lives, he thinks, are like a house of cards. The secrets they keep are the tiny dots of glue that hold everything together. And this, he thinks, is just another example of the glue holding this section of the Woman's house.  
  
What a strange image.  
  
"I don't have plans for petty revenge," he says. "Though I'll admit to being just a tad _sore_ about his misfire."  
  
He'd go for a better pun, but he decides that his present health allows for unfavorable humor.  
  
"I would bring him in for a more formal identification session, but if you're willing to look in the cabinet back in the rest area," he says, nodding behind him. "We might have our assassin on this plane with us."  
  
  
Her eyes narrow, ever so slightly before she glances back towards the cabinet in question. So _he_ didn't know what Moran looked like. Useful, though his remark about the gunshot makes that unshakeable knot in the pit of her stomach twinge ever so slightly. She swallows it back.  
  
"It isn't your plans for petty revenge that concern me," she says drily. No, it's his concern, if he realizes that what she wanted wasn't just a _friend_ in Moriarty's former network, but the network itself... well that could make things difficult.  
  
She rises from her seat with every intention of climbing over him in his to the back. "I'm starting to think you waited until I was seated so I'd have to do this again."  
  
  
"That would be terribly petty of me," he says with a sly smirk. He may be in pain and more than a little frustrated with the Woman right now, but he does manage to hold onto some of his sense of humor.  
  
Which is when he hears it. A pop, sharp and loud, coming from somewhere on his left. A woman screams, and he turns his head, looking to the windows on the side opposite them, where a plume of dark smoke has come from under the wing.  
  
The plane takes a dramatic dip to the left, and he's thrown backwards in his chair, with the Woman thrown in his direction.


	3. The Science of Flight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mysteries of the no-longer-dead flight attendant, that of Sherlock's mysterious attacker, and that of the explosives onboard their airplane begin to coalesce into a coherent whole. But will the promise of a mystery's solution be enough to keep Sherlock Holmes on his feet, or will the damage from London finally catch up to them, 10,000 feet in the air?

The plane shudders, the entire fuselage seeming to scream (or perhaps that was the people), and Irene feels the sickening drop in her stomach as the plane dips sharply and she is thrown back towards Sherlock's seat.  
  
Her cry of equal parts pain and surprise as her hip connects hard with the armrest is swallowed up by the growing cacophony of the other passengers, and Irene's hand grips the seat back in front of her to steady herself, feeling her heart in her throat at the plane's maneuver.  
  
There is no hiding her wide-eyed look as she tries to haul herself back into her seat. The pilot is speaking, trying to make an announcement, but the passengers' panic is louder, for the moment. "You said something about explosives?" she manages to choke out as the plane shudders again, dips (shallower this time), and mercifully remains intact.  
  
  
"Something within the engine," Sherlock says. His face is stony, and his eyes are shut, blocking out the cacophony, focusing on the Woman's words and the feel of his seat beneath him.  
  
It's not that he's _afraid_ of flying, mind. He's simply uncomfortable with the sudden knowledge that this plane could very likely fall out of the sky at any given moment. He's also not taking that very well. He'll focus on being here, being in his seat, on not falling and---  
  
The sound of a scream different than the others breaks him out of his moment. The hostess, more than just frightened. Terrified. Hostesses are meant to be calm in situations like this, not panicked. Sherlock's eyes snap open and he tilts his head, trying to get a better look at where the hostess is. Unable to see her, he moves to get out of his seat, to go up towards where she last was.  
  
  
"Ladies and gentlemen... experienced...engine event...keep calm...arrive...destination." The pilot's calm announcement cut intermittently through the passengers' collective panic, and Irene swallows back a grim smile. Her white-knuckled grip on the seat doesn't ease even as the plane begins to steady itself, its next dip significantly shallower, more even. 'Engine event' indeed.  
  
But then a scream, higher pitched, sharper and flavoured with genuine terror rather than uncertain fear, cuts through the general frightened noise and beside her Sherlock bolts upright, suddenly attentive. "What is it?" she demands  
  
  
" _This_ is our diversion," he says. "Something to throw us off guard, something to keep everyone who might bet watching looking in the direction of the engine rather than at the one person who might possibly be in real danger here."  
  
He steps out into the aisle and a man rushing past, terrified, slams into Sherlock's shoulder. He stifles a cry but continues forward, the mystery far more important than the pain.  
  
  
She curses as he forges on, and Irene tugs her own recently fastened seat belt apart to follow. The thought occurs to her that at some point following Sherlock Holmes had become something she _did_. It does not occur to her that the reverse is true, because she is all too used to leading.  
  
She follows, shouldering her way past the terrified man running past, and is rewarded by a sharp, wheezing gasp from the man from her elbow digging sharply into his chest.  
  
It's a small moment of gratification as she makes her way towards the midsection bulkheads, where she'd last seen the flight attendant, leaning against a convenient galley alcove.  
  
  
Sherlock gets to the the alcove and passes it, uncertain where the Woman might've had her liaison with the attendant. He can't see her anywhere.  
  
There's another pop outside and the turbulence in the cabin gets very rough, leaving Sherlock gripping onto the side of the walls. Distraction, diversion, whatever it is, the attendant appears to be hiding, and for the best as Sherlock can only barely manage to stay on his feet.  
  
"It isn't the diamonds," he says as the Woman catches him up. "If she had any reason, _any_ , to fear her life over those, she'd have kept them on her person. It's something else."  
  
  
Her hands are white-knuckled as she grips the edge of a galley cart. The thought occurs to Irene as the plane shudders in the turbulence that the moveable cart was not the most stable thing to be holding onto and she transfers her grip to the bulkhead itself.  
  
"Well it might be the fact that the plane appears to want to shake itself apart," she mutters half under her breath. "She found out about the sister, perhaps?"  
  
  
"Or she's realized that someone would go to these lengths to kill her, too," he says. He spins back towards the Woman and looks at her, intense.  
  
"You had her far more intimately," he says. "You must have seen something. Something about what her plans were, or who might've wanted to hurt her. _Think_."  
  
Normally, a woman's life wouldn't matter so much, but there's a mystery here, one he thinks they can unravel.  
  
  
The plane's shudders are growing fewer, a sign of the pilots' growing control perhaps, and Irene takes the opportunity to give him a sharp, irritated look. "Are you trying to find _her_ or figure out the case?" she snaps.  
  
Irene turns her head back towards the alcove they'd passed, her brow furrowing. The flight attendant's things had been in the back, when he'd found the jewels; there'd been little for her to find on the woman's body, uniform, fake birthmark, the legs of a gymnast, strong, flexible, eager but unobservant as Irene had slipped a hand into her breast pocket--  
  
"She'll be in the crew rest," she says, reaching into her pocket and thrusting a small slim piece of plastic at him, the flight attendant's identification. Name, next of kin, nationality, all sorts of things a frequent international traveler might want to have handy.  
  
  
His eyebrows narrow. Crew rest. A sexual encounter, of course. She's not like the Woman, who can emerge from anything looking as pristine as she'd entered it. The stewardess would need to go and freshen up.  
  
He takes the piece of plastic and looks it over. MaryJane Cordian. The next of kin was listed as J. Cordian. If Sherlock was to guess, he'd say the sisters were probably Mary and Jane, and simply combined their names. That meant that Mary was the one they were looking for, as Jane (the one in charge) would've put herself down as her own next of kin.  
  
He tucks the piece of plastic into his pocket and follows the Woman.  
  
  
She isn't certain where the entry to the crew rest is precisely on this plane, but she refused to admit it. Instead Irene recalls their previous trips when she _had_ had opportunity to find the crew rest and extrapolates from there, heading for the divide between the first class and coach areas, running her hand along several bulkheads that looked like nothing but lockers or storage spaces.  
  
She wrenches the middle one open, and is rewarded with the ladder entry to the crew rest. But a thought occurs to her and she hesitates, straining to pick up any sign of struggle or movement from above.  
  
  
He notices her hesitation and stops behind her.  
  
"Shall I?" he offers.  
  
  
A look of annoyance flits across Irene's face, that she'd given away anything at all. She wonders again if it had just been her imagination that she'd heard something. She shakes her head, and her hand tightens on the ladder as she begins to climb.  
  
"It'll be tight up here," she warns, halfway up. "May be best to stay down there with your shoulder."  
  
  
He glares right back at her. He thinks about just how painful that climb will be and how much the plane is shaking, and decides she's probably right. He hates that most of all.  
  
"If you scream, I'm following," he says. He'd much rather the stewardess died than she did.  
  
  
"You haven't managed to make me scream yet, I doubt anyone up there could manage," she says with a smirk. Still, there is a small comfort in knowing he will be there, if necessary.  
  
Despite her flippant words, Irene is careful as her head clears the entry. The crew rest itself is almost unnaturally quiet, whatever it was that insulated the small area had turned it into a venerable cocoon of silence, which made the fact that the woman's scream had been audible even more impressive.  
  
Speaking of, the flight attendant in question is huddled in the corner of one of the bunks, her hands clasped around her knees, staring at papers scattered on the bed. A quick glance shows no one else in the area, and Irene hurries in. She grabs the woman by the wrist and all but hauled her to the ladder, gesturing for her to head back down to where Sherlock waits while Irene collects the papers, the notes and photos that seemed to have sparked the scream.  
  
  
The girl starts down the ladder, and Sherlock looks up. She's terrified, and he immediately begins on the standard of "It's all right" and the like, the sort of thing he'd say if John's girlfriend ended up in some sort of trouble. All terribly fake, but very effective for someone who is afraid.  
  
She all but falls into his arms, sobbing. He bites down on his lip to keep from crying out in pain.  
  
"Who is it?" he says. "Who's doing this to you?"  
  
  
Having seen Sherlock Holmes' actual attempts at comforting, the act he puts on for the flight attendant is doubly fake to Irene's eyes as she follows, a thick paper envelope in her hands. On the other hand, there is a distinct lack of shouting with his false attempts with the flight attendant, so maybe genuine sentiment isn't actually necessary to the equation.  
  
Still, the girl only manages a few syllables as she clings to Sherlock. "They-- They-- _Janie_ \--"  
  
Irene follows down the ladder and catches the woman by the elbow, at the same time passing the envelope off to Sherlock. She's caught a glimpse of the papers within, but the only thing she thinks she recognizes is a morgue photo of the other flight attendant. The sister.  
  
"I think we could use some privacy, don't you?" she says to him, nodding to the curtains that could be pulled to keep the service area hidden from view. Irene pulls down a service seat from the wall and guides the sobbing girl into it. "Sit, and hold still, you could use a drink more than any of us."  
  
  
Sherlock takes the envelope and gratefully passes off the girl. He waits until the Woman is focused on her to bring his hand up to his shoulder. It feels hot, and when he pulls back, he feels like his shirt is wet beneath.  
  
He reaches out and pulls closed the curtains.  
  
"Jane, your sister," he says, dropping all pretense of comfort. "Both of you living one life to give the other the perfect alibi during a crime. But someone had to have seen through it."  
  
  
Her attention is on the sobbing girl and the irritable need to get her to focus, rather than on the fact that the consulting detective with her is taking longer than expected to close a curtain. She does, however, turn at his explanation, surprised and mildly impressed.  
  
The young woman, on the other hand, is less impressed, and instead bursts into another fit of sobbing at the question. Irene waits, counting to thirty, but when the sobbing does not abate, she rolls her eyes and steps back, rummaging through the galley cart until she finds the bottles of liquor.  
  
With a few of them in hand, she steps towards the girl again, and delivers a sharp, precise blow to her cheek. It's enough to stun the girl out of her fit and at the same moment Irene thrust one of the bottles into her hand. "Drink up, pet," she says crisply. "And tell us who you've been working with."  
  
Too stunned to do anything else, the girl obeys, her eyes darting between them as she tips the contents of a small bottle of brandy down her throat. "I-- I don't know," she says, her voice unsteady, "Janie took care of the details."  
  
  
"And Jane's boyfriend?" Sherlock demands.  
  
He glances up at the Woman with a nod. Monogamous, they'd determined, for the first girl. Where this one was more flirtatious and easier to seduce.  
  
"Oh, you had to be her sometimes in London. You had to have known who he was."  
  
  
The girl starts, surprised by their knowledge, and her lips thin almost imperceptibly. A small smile curves on Irene's lips as the pieces fall into place, the little clues betraying the girl's answer. "She wouldn't let you too close to him when you were in London," Irene breathes. "Of course not, everything was shared except for the boyfriend, that wasn't for little Mary. But you had to know the details, all the intimate things she would know, just in case."  
  
The girl nods, old resentment momentarily replacing fear. "She pretended to be _me_ with _my_ friends, but not me, not for precious stupid _Vincent_."  
  
  
"Vincent was your inside man," he says. "The person that would get you the key to the lock, but also provide the perfect alibi. Which is where the suitcase comes in."  
  
He gestures to the Woman, and then back to Mary. "The suitcase your sister had with her on the plane to London, but didn't have with her when she was killed. Something you passed back and forth through luggage. Tools of your trade. That's why she guarded it so tightly. It was your secret, the one you expected to pick up in Nassau as you dropped off the diamonds in your purse. Except, someone was waiting for her in London. Someone who expected a payment she knew nothing about."  
  
He smirks, just slightly. "Shame Vincent's assassin met your sister rather than you in London. You'd have paid him off, as agreed. She didn't have the faintest idea what he was talking about. And then he knew your secret."  
  
  
A small furrow appears on Irene's brow as she follows his line of deduction; she considers herself better than most when it came to understanding just how his deductions _worked_ , but sometimes (like now) even Irene had to admit, grudgingly, that Sherlock Holmes found smaller stepping stones for his logic than most people were aware existed.  
  
The flight attendant just gapes, her skin beginning to flush with the brandy, and Irene murmurs to him, "Too bad you've gotten yourself shot. Otherwise I'd drag you up to the crew rest by your hair right this very minute."  
  
  
Sherlock preens in his own subtle way. On par with John Watson's proclamations of _brilliant_ and _amazing_ were the Woman's proclamations of desire at his brilliance. She had a way of making it all seem so---so _right_ , having a sexual desire that was based entirely on intellect. Until her, he'd believed such a thing was only myth. But then again, she turned many of his previous thoughts on his head simply by walking into his life.  
  
The plane jerks, and Sherlock grips the side of the wall with his good arm.  
  
He smirks, just a little. "Had I any stamina whatsoever right now, I might be amiable to it, seeing as at this rate, it might be the last things we do." To the flight attendant, he demands: "Who are they?  
  
  
She smirks in response, but the moment (or the brandy now making its way through her veins) is enough to give Mary time to formulate an answer, and she shakes her head violently. "I don't know," she says, emphatic, "Janie kept track of it all, her and Vincent." She turns to them, blinking rapidly. "Vincent! Vincent Spaulding. That was his name."  
  
Irene frowns, the name rings a bell, and she tries to think of where she'd heard it before. It takes a few moments, and she's got it. "Duncan Ross's protégé?"  
  
  
"Cover name," Sherlock says. "Duncan Ross was one of Mycroft's former men, took to working for Jim, or so one of my sources told me."  
  
He pauses, primarily for dramatic effect, but also because he finds himself ready to start on another coughing fit that would really interrupt his deductions.  
  
"That contact works out of Nassau," he says, with a nod in her direction. He opens his mouth to speak again, but turns to cough.  
  
  
She gives him a sharp, penetrating look as he turns away to cough and reaches for the miniature liquor bottles again. She picks one at random and presses it into his hand. "Stop showing off and drink," she commands.  
  
She knows the alcohol will do next to nothing, except perhaps clear his throat. There's the miniscule hope that slight intoxication would make him more biddable, but Irene knows _that_ is an absurd idea. Still, the gesture allows her to touch his hand, to gauge body temperature and whether or not he's broken out in a cold sweat or any number of things.  
  
Irene doesn't bother watching to see if he complies, instead looking from Sherlock to Mary the flight attendant. The girl could be useful; she took instruction well, and clearly could lead a double life. The fact that she was significantly less useful without the twin factored into Irene's calculations, but being biddable and seemingly well-versed in jewel theft made up for it, at least a little. With training, she could certainly be _very_ useful, and Irene kept that in the back of her mind.  
  
"Think, pet," she says to the girl, "Did Vincent ever mention Nassau, to you or Jane?" A twist of her lips. "And don't give me anything about how you didn't know what Jane knew. You'd have found it out."  
  
  
The girl hasn't eaten in a while, Sherlock determines. Anorexic, possibly. A desire to be perfect like her sister. Or perhaps not. Things feel out of place in Sherlock's mind. Confusion. It must be another symptom. He opens the alcohol she hands him and takes a drink. Alcohol. He may have damaged the tissue in his shoulder with the isopropyl alcohol.  
  
He focuses as the girl begins speaking. "He was bringing her here. A trip. That's---"  
  
"That's why you chose now to set an assassin on him," Sherlock finishes for her. "Arrive in Nassau, and it would simply look like he'd stood your sister up. She'd never know you were behind it."  
  
The plane dips again, but the pilot quickly regains control.  
  
  
"She never would have. Jane never thinks I can do anything on my--" Her words are drowned out by a gasp as the plane dips and straightens itself out.  
  
Irene curses when the plane dips again, her grip tightening on the galley's console. "Which still doesn't explain why your pilots seem to think trick flying is the best idea at this point," she says. Mary shakes her head and opens her mouth again, but Irene waves her to silence with an irritated wave.  
  
She refuses to feel nauseated, and instead nods at the back of the plane. "Think it's safe to send her to the cockpit for better answers about whether or not they were trying to bring this down, or am I wrong in recalling that you've stuffed her potential assailant in a cupboard in the back?"  
  
  
"No, no. She should be fine. We can't be very far from the islands, Woman."  
  
They had to land. This would be the second most idiotic way to die tonight. The first would be the growing infection in his shoulder.  
  
The girl gives Sherlock a strange look as he calls the Woman "Woman". He expects she does not understand him, or misconstrues his comment for sexism. Were he John Watson, he would care about this. As it is, he does not.  
  
  
"Best to know what to expect when we land," Irene says, plucking the empty brandy bottle from the flight attendant's hand and running a slim cool finger along the line of her jaw. "You heard him, dear," she says, crisp and authoritative. "Speak to the pilot and we'll see how you can get off this plane alive when we land."  
  
The odd expression is slow to fade from Mary's face as she looks first at Sherlock, then to Irene, and back again. Irene practically pulls the girl out of her chair and shoves her through the curtains towards the front of the plane. "I never would have guess you had a fear of flying," she says, suddenly conversational, as she turns back to Sherlock.  
  
  
Sherlock's lips twist into a half-smirk at the Woman's actions with the girl. He suspects she sees her as useful. A tool, the way that the Kate woman had been back in London. He doesn't fault her logic, especially considering what allies she's trying to build around herself. She'll need pliable people she can trust.  
  
Strangely enough, this makes him think of John. He must be married now. Honeymooning somewhere.  
  
He raises an eyebrow at the Woman's words. "Fear of flying?"  
  
  
She leans against the galley, forcing herself to breathe slowly, to loosen her grip on the bulkhead as she does so. "The helicopter in Hong Kong," she says. "You were nervous then too. On edge. And now this idiotic display." Instead of gesturing with a hand, she nods towards the wing of the aircraft, the engine that had plumed smoke earlier.  
  
A quirk of her lips. "Or are you going to tell me they're two completely unrelated things?"  
  
  
He sets his lips in a thin line. He does have more than a mild anxiety when it comes to flying, but it is usually due to the instability of the people around him and the lack of control. It is why he plays the games he does, works out what packages go with what person, what sort of life they live.  
  
"Then, I had a starved, injured novice flying me. Now, it's entirely possible the plane is going to crash due to sabotage by whoever it is that wants to kill her on this plane," he says. "Yes, I think they're entirely unrelated."  
  
He nods behind himself.  
  
"Speaking of, shall we find out who he is before we all die?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone genuinely curious about just what happened to Sherlock and Irene's airplane, [this video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Se24DfpUgw) may be illuminating.


	4. Friends in High Places

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The twin mysteries of the dead and not dead flight attendants and the attack on the airplane come to a head, but will Sherlock Holmes survive long enough to solve them? Or will Irene Adler be left to pick up the pieces?

Her look of smug triumph is almost immediately eclipsed by indignation at being dismissed as a novice, and after a heartbeat, she simply laughs quietly to herself. Purposeful, of course. Neither of them could let the other gain too clear an advantage.  
  
"We _all_ die? I'm not the one coughing every five minutes," she dismisses. Irene forces herself to let go of the bulkhead, to swallow back fear and worry and play at brittle flippancy. She brushes past him, towards the back where he'd stashed the supposed assassin/saboteur. "But if you insist."  
  
  
He takes another drink of the alcohol, emptying the bottle. It burns against his empty stomach, but it clears his throat a bit. There is a burn going down, but not the same as if he had a cut from the coughing in the esophagus. The blood must be from the lungs, then. _Damn._  
  
"Unless you missed the damaged plane, Woman, we---"  
  
She brushes past him, and once they step into the aisle of the plane, it's surprising to see every passenger in their seats, all sitting stock still, listening as another hostess gives them patient commands to stay calm, that everything is under control. He's mildly stunned by how calm they're all being. They don't have expensive brandy swimming in their stomach like he and Mary do.  
  
He steps around the hostess, who politely tells them to return to their seats.  
  
  
At the radically changed state of the plane, Irene glances over at the stewardess with obvious approval. The woman's nerves are frayed, but her voice remains calm and she's almost unfailingly polite at their sudden appearance.  
  
Irene shakes her head at the stewardess' request, and gestures to Sherlock and the back of the plane, mouthing the word 'washroom' at the woman, and letting the smell of brandy be as eloquent a response as necessary.  
  
  
It's not right, his mind keeps telling him. They're so calm. How can they be calm like this?  
  
He heads to the back of the aisle, holding open the washroom door to disguise their step into the back room. He looks to where the man was held a moment earlier.  
  
Keyword _was_. The cupboard had been opened, possibly by the shaking of the plane. He turns to say a warning to the Woman, but suddenly hands come out from the side, pulling him back and throwing his head against the side of the cabin.  
  
  
His attention turns to an open cabinet, and the fact that it is open puts Irene on edge. Still, she doesn't immediately expect the hands that reach out and grab Sherlock, and it takes Irene seconds to react, to grab the stranger's wrists, slamming one against the bulkhead with a satisfying crack of either panel or bone.  
  
She doesn't want to risk taking her attention off their assailant, but she realizes that she had been slow in reacting. "Sherlock, it'd be a bit helpful if you weren't unconscious," she manages to grind out. She can only hope, for the moment, that he isn't.  
  
  
His head is swimming, and he finds himself coughing again, the pressure of the grab pulling a muscle in his shoulder. He looks up, only just able to cough out some sort of a warning as he sees their assailant moving to swing at the Woman.  
  
"Vatican Cameos!"  
  
  
The warning comes a moment too slow, and Irene feels the blow just clip the back of her head as she ducks. It isn't strong enough to knock her out, but it stuns her momentarily, and her grip on the man's wrist loosens just enough for him to pull free.  
  
He moves to close quarters and she does the same aiming, sight unseen, to deliver a blow to his groin. There isn't the immediate reaction that tells her she's met her mark, but there is a sharp exhale of breath that makes Irene suspect she's gotten at least a blow to the stomach.  
  
"One day," she gasps, grasping their assailant's wrist again and wrenching his arm back, "you're going to have to tell me the story behind that."  
  
  
He smirks, still gasping for air. The whole of his right chest wall hurts. He feels dizziness along with the confusion, and it's all very consuming. He can't focus on her, or on the man fighting her.  
  
His eyes go to his shoes. Inexpensive, clearly repaired. Laces changed twice. The closest he has to posh shoes, then, and something he's terribly uncomfortable in. Not the sort of thing a well-trained hitman would use. So why is he here? What does he think he's doing?  
  
The plane seems to vibrate, and when Sherlock takes in a breath, it isn't enough air. Another wave of dizziness, and he stumbles backwards, sliding down the wall.  
  
  
The man isn't a skilled CIA agent, but he did have size and leverage to his advantage. Luckily, as far as Irene was concerned, he had little idea of just what to do with that size and leverage, and when she wrenches his arm back near enough to dislocate his shoulder, she's rewarded with a gasp of pain and the man going significantly stiller in response.  
  
But then she realizes there is no response from Sherlock, just a gasp of laboured breathing, and Irene risks turning to see him just in time to watch him stumble, sliding down the wall. A tendril of cold fear slides down her spine, and she roughly rams the man's head against the bulkhead panel, the single blow causing him to slump, unconscious, and she drops him unceremoniously to the ground like a sack of potatoes.  
  
She is running on adrenaline, ignoring the throb at the back of her own head where the now-unconscious man's blow had landed, as she moves over to Sherlock, her fingers resting at the pulse point at his throat, with its still-fading bruise from their time in London. Her other hand moves to check his pupils as she begins snapping for a flight attendant, her voice authoritative and brittle.  
  
  
He blinks, trying to clear his head. He can't get in enough air.  
  
"No," he tries to whisper. "Can't bring attention to---"  
  
He can't breathe.  
  
He struggles to make his voice firm.  
  
" _Irene_ ," he says. He reaches to touch her arm. "I can't bring attention to _you_."  
  
  
Her fingers close on his hand when he reached for her arm, and her touch is cold as iron. "You'll bring more attention to us both if you die on this plane," she snaps back.  
  
She hopes Mary would be more likely to answer the summons for help rather than the calmly professional attendant. The girl was biddable; the other flight attendant would be too busy asking questions.  
  
She can hear his struggle for breath, and Irene rests her free hand on his chest, frowning as footsteps approach, the noise barely audible over the noise of the plane.  
  
  
"I'll---make it to Nassau," he promises, his voice strained.  
  
There's a gasp, and Sherlock lolls his head up to see Mary gasping, her face stunned.  
  
" _Vincent_!" she cries out.  
  
Sherlock tries to get to his feet, willing body to work over pain and lack of air.  
  
  
Irene breathes a sigh of relief when Mary is the one who appears, though that is purely temporary when she notices the body beneath her hand is struggling to get back to his feet. " _Stay down_ ," she tells him.  
  
Normally she'd simply push him back to the floor with the hand on his chest, but the possibility that it might do more harm than good has wormed its way into her mind. And while any pain that could make him black out might make things easier in the short run, she cannot help but think that she'd prefer him conscious and able to irritably catalog his own ailments.  
  
It was comforting, strangely, in its own way.  
  
"He's unconscious, not dead," she snaps at Mary instead, authority ringing sharp in her voice. "Now get me the emergency oxygen mask and keep your _competent_ coworker away from here or I will change that fact for both of you."  
  
  
Oxygen mask. He blinks, confused. Why would Vincent need an oxygen mask? He'll need to be informed that the girl running around is not the one he'd planned to run away with, but other than that---  
  
Wait. The mask is for Sherlock, he figures. Good. That's good. That's a good idea.  
  
"Oxygen deprivation," he manages. "Causing confusion. There's no point in me without my mind, Woman."  
  
Everything else, after all, is just transport.  
  
  
She almost wants to laugh at that, but catches herself. If she starts indulging the worry, the knot of tension in the pit of her stomach, she'll be of worse than no use to either of them. "All the more reason to rectify the oxygen deprivation," she says tightly.  
  
She takes her hand away from his chest, but the one gripping his hand remains exactly where it is as Mary blinks, scurrying to open cabinets and bring down a canister of emergency oxygen and the associated apparatuses. The girl was clearly overwhelmed, and had resorted to following authority to cope. That helped.  
  
Mary connects tubing and mask to the oxygen canister, and with a few corrections from Irene, offers Sherlock the mask.  
  
  
He shakes his head, stubborn to the last.  
  
"Pure oxygen might make the confusion worse."  
  
  
Irene rolls her eyes and snatches the mask from the girl when she hesitates at his response.  
  
"Then alternate between ambient and the mask," she says. "Do it yourself or I'll do it for you and you won't like that at all."  
  
  
He gives her a half-smirk and he has a rather impressive bit of innuendo on his lips when another cough suddenly takes him. He turns his head and coughs, tasting blood in his mouth and on his lips. Worse. It's worse. His teeth are tinged with his own blood.  
  
He turns back and nods to her.  
  
Before the mask can go on his face, he manages to say: "He did this. Just remember that when you're making friends."


	5. Strands of Spider's Silk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Their plane lands in Nassau, but it is obvious that Sherlock Holmes is in no shape to continue their journey without medical assistance, but at the same time, another familiar face appears in the crowd...

There's blood on his lips; she's suspected from most of the flight, from the distinctly wet sound of his continued coughing, but the sight of it is far more concrete than the nebulous knowledge, and the knot of tension in the pit of her stomach grows heavier.  
  
But then he speaks, and her lips thin. She _refuses_ to feel guilty for the current state of affairs. She admits to misjudging, to miscalculating how far Moran would be pushed, but he could have stayed in London, but instead had been idiotic stubborn intractable--  
  
She simply refuses and schools her expression with difficulty to blank neutrality. Her grip on his hand is more difficult to loosen. "I told you before, I don't make friends," she says as she lets go of his hand, fitting the mask over his face. "Now breathe, assuming you haven't forgotten how."  
  
  
She hasn't forgotten how to make friends. He raises his hand up to touch her wrist as she puts the mask on his face. The oxygen makes him woozy, dizzy. He checks her pulse. It seems slow, but his might seem high. Everything is relative.  
  
His vision is somewhat blurry, but he blinks through it to try to see her. He remembers a time when she was going blurry in his vision. Her voice rang out to him, then. _Good night, Mr. Sherlock Holmes._  
  
The pilot is announcing that they are landing momentarily, and to please strap themselves in.  
  
  
She lets go of his hand, but his fingertips are at her wrist, and there is something about that that is utterly and uniquely _them_ , that defies easy explanation. And simple, stunned, shell-shocked Mary wants nothing but easy explanation, looking from Irene to Sherlock to unconscious Vincent. So Mary gets no explanation whatsoever.  
  
Irene ignores the pilot's instructions over the announcement system, and instead begin issuing orders. They're straightforward enough that the girl will be able to perform them in her current state, and obvious enough that even the more competent flight attendant would find it hard to disapprove of.  
  
Vincent, of course, had been unfortunate enough to be out of his seat when the engine incident occurred. That was obvious. Poor man must have hit his head during the jolt, explained his unconsciousness, and fallen poorly to account for his other injuries.  
  
Poor Mr. Norton, hunting accident back in the English countryside, and the jolt on the plane just made the shoulder wound worse, wheezing on the oxygen mask. Should really have gotten it taken care of but well, tourists. Mrs. Norton was holding up remarkably well but obviously worried, already asking for a doctor at the gate, wheelchairs, ambulances.  
  
By the time Nassau can be seen in the plane's windows, she's already arranged with the flight attendant transportation out, despite the knowledge that has made its way through the plane that it was going to be a cautious process, getting off the plane, what with that one engine having chewed itself to pieces mid-flight.  
  
And if the flight attendant, one Miss MaryJane Cordian, seemed skittish and prone to following Mrs. Godfrey Norton's every instruction as she watched over her shoulder, well, it had been a very rough flight.  
  
It's an easy enough narrative to spin, and the pieces of it are in place by the time the plane touches down in Nassau, and Irene waits, never having shaken off Sherlock's fingers at her wrist, for the crowd to thin, and to slip away.  
  
  
He can hear her voice in the background of the white noise that rushes through his ears. Issuing commands. Taking control from where she stays next to him. He hasn't completely fallen into unconsciousness, and he keeps his fingers on her wrist, the beat of her heart as comforting as if he were being held. Possibly more so, actually, considering he finds being held to be overtly constricting at the best of times.  
  
He feels the plane touch down. The jerk on his body at the rough landing doesn't actually hurt all that much, and he considers this something to worry about. He's sweating, and trying to convince himself that he doesn't need to sweat is really out of the question.  
  
He has always been a man trying to be a god. Right now, it's entirely proof that he's still just a man.  
  
They lift him onto a gurney to carry him away, and through the haze, he's pretty sure he says something about how insulting it all is. Difficult to tell, really. He blinks, and other passengers are being escorted off of the plane.  
  
Middle aged woman, blue shirt, had been crying. Twenty-something man, green shirt, too high to care. Young Chinese girl---  
  
He blinks again, and he's certain the girl is looking at him. He's certain he knows her.  
  
"Woman," he tries to breathe to her, but the paramedic is telling him to be quiet.  
  
  
It becomes abundantly clear to the paramedics that, even half-conscious, the man with the fluid in his lungs is going to be a difficult case. It becomes equally clear seconds later that the woman with him is equally difficult, and she is not impaired.  
  
So when Sherlock starts trying to get her attention, one paramedic tries to tell him to be quiet while the second, having already seen the futility of the situation, simply gestures for Irene to close in with a warning not to get in the way and a mutter that difficult patients 'deserved one another'.  
  
Irene's attempts to keep her eyes open, to keep track of Mary, to ensure Vincent doesn't regain consciousness early enough to contradict the narrative she's spun, is hampered by the paramedics' continued insistence on draping her (along with the rest of the plane's passengers) in a flimsy shock blanket.  
  
So when the paramedic gestures her in, she takes the opportunity to shed said useless shock blanket before leaning in close. It is uneasily simple to school her expression into one of concern as she does so.  
  
She slips her hand underneath his fingers, though Irene expects he's hardly in any state to resort to Morse Code. "What is it?"  
  
  
Her hand is in his, and he can't think of why that's important. It's all very confusing. He knows what he has to tell her is very important, but he doesn't know how. The girl? No, no, that might be construed to mean Mary. Or anyone, really. Other females are suspects or girls, she's the Woman. There's a difference that only he understands. He, and possibly she and---he has to focus.  
  
He moves his eyes from her to down, down where the passengers are going. He can't say 'Moran.' If someone is listening, it means too much. It might stir something, and there's no one they can trust. They can't trust anyone at all.  
  
"Spider," he says.  
  
He can only hope it's enough to make her _look_. Jim's web, spiders crawling all along it.  
  
  
Her brow furrows in momentary confusion and Irene wonders if he is even worse off than he looks, but the way he looks away from her is too deliberate to be a symptom of the wound. Her mind races as she scans the crowd gathering as the passengers disembark. A bitter grandmother trying to corral two young boys. The businessman afraid of flying who's had too much to drink.  
  
There are too many details to contend with, she needs to know where to _look_ , what the consulting detective would look--  
  
 _The consulting detective has a broom and a web_... _Spider..._  
  
Her eyes are sharper as she scans the passengers and she sees her. The Chinese girl, her eyes wide and her expression calm, her clothes unrumpled by hours of sitting in a confining seat, unlike the other passengers. The real passengers.  
  
The last time she'd seen the girl, she'd been bundled into a cab in Hong Kong, sent towards Mycroft Holmes like a beacon.  
  
And Moran had her, which meant...  
  
Her hand tightens on his, gaining her a grumble from the paramedic trying to clip on a heart monitor. Irene ignores him and begins looking up. Too few high perches for a sniper around the airport.  
  
"He's here."  
  
  
Sherlock's shoulder doesn't hurt right now, but he knows who shot him, and knowing he's somewhere there, somewhere _close_ , it's worrying. No, not worrying. Terrifying. He's utterly incapacitated here, and he can feel his own consciousness start to fade again. The only thing solid is the hand holding his.  
  
"Pocket," he manages before his own grip goes slack in hers.  
  
In his right pocket are the stolen diamonds, ones he'd rather not lose to some greedy paramedic, or a very lucky mortician. Odd, that being the last thing he manages to think before losing his touch on reality, he thinks, but---  
  
And all is black.  
  
  
When he loses consciousness, the medics are at once more efficient and more sympathetic, simply working their way around the woman keeping watch. This is something they think they've seen before, countless times. The lover/wife/husband/brother/sister/loved one hovering stunned by the bedside of the injured, not knowing whether they would survive.  
  
One of the paramedics says something he considers comforting, something about how his vitals are steady despite fluid collecting in his lungs and the hospital will have everything cleared up.  
  
Irene Adler nods, and ignores them. They see what they expect, and none of the paramedics notice that her attention is equally split between apparent worry for the unconscious man they're stabilizing and the fact that she is constantly scanning the crowd around them, that she shifts and moves in subtle ways that keep her within arm's reach of anyone who comes close. They expect she is simply concerned, but Irene is imminently conscious of the fact that the girl from Hong Kong is _here_ , which means Moran is close, and despite her intention a mere half hour ago, she stays because there is no one else she trusts to ensure that the Consulting Detective remains in the world.  
  
It is, perhaps understandable, that within all the activity, all her concern and paranoia, that the quiet disappearance of one MaryJane Cordian into what appears to all to be an ambulance/fire truck goes completely unnoticed and unremarked on.


	6. Deja Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock Holmes' body may be little more than transport for his brain, but when transport fails, it is up to Irene Adler to pick up the pieces. But will this moment of flirting with disaster bring revelations that are too uncomfortable to face, and if it does, will Irene Adler flee back into death?

It has been 11 days since Sherlock Holmes was admitted to Princess Margaret Hospital in Nassau. He was immediately taken in for surgery, where a segment of dead tissue from his shoulder was removed, a drain was placed, and he was put on assisted breathing and heavy antibiotics. Three days later, his assisted breathing was removed. The lung tissue that had collapsed, he would later learn, repaired relatively quickly, his body receptive to medication despite what they determined to be dehydration and undernourishment. Silly tourists, never taking care of themselves before they go on holiday.  
  
He is not entirely certain on what days he began to wake up. He remembers waking briefly, seeing some nurses in his room and a dark-haired Woman sitting by his bedside. She said something. He doesn't know what. He woke later, he isn't certain how much later, and she was gone.  
  
She didn't return. He certainly can't blame her, after all. The entire ordeal left Sherlock with a decidedly bitter taste in his mouth, and not simply from the pain medication and antibiotics. Once he is back to a normal status of waking in the morning and lying quietly in the evening, he is given a computer to access the internet and use of a telephone. He does not call anyone, though he does spend an excessive amount of time on the internet, working on his list of Moriarty's web to remove. The Las Vegas hotel is going to need to be revisited, but not before he makes a stop-off in San Salvador to meet his contact. Vincent's arrival on the plane is important. The Woman's new friend would've been an excellent person to talk to about him, but he can only suspect she must be away, wherever the Woman has gone.  
  
Again, he certainly can't blame her. For leaving. In fact, at first it is comforting, being in his own head, having no one to spar with.  
  
On day 8, John Watson updates his blog. The wedding never happened, it appears. They decided to wait a little longer, until the time was right. Sherlock can't help but be grateful that _something_ good managed to happen during this ordeal.  
  
By day 10, he is anxious. Irritable. He wants to leave. He wants to leave _now_ , but throwing any sort of fit would make himself too obvious, someone to remember. He waits. He's patient, though he does throw a few manipulative comments about having to get back to London for work, and around 7am, he's given discharge papers and a bottle of Vicodin for his shoulder pain.  
  
He only stays in Nassau long enough to purchase new clothing, cigarettes, and a water bottle. He has never been to this island before, but he is aware that water is difficult to come by apart from on the base where his contact lives. The airport to the other islands is small and not air conditioned, which is going to have to be fine, considering he's aware how little air conditioning he's going to see in the future. He buys a small meat pastry, takes his pain medication, and waits for his plane.  
  
Strange. A mere few weeks ago, he'd have found himself perfectly content with solace and silence in this moment, waiting. Now, it feels like he has a million theories he wants to talk about and only himself to share it with. He admits that he misses John. He refuses to admit that he misses the Woman.  
  
He certainly can't blame her.  
  
  
She didn't expect it the first time he regains consciousness, sometime between the third and fourth day. It was, in fact, the only reason he saw her at all. With the nurses around, she said something appropriately comforting and trite, albeit drily. It didn't matter, of course, she doubted he'd remember.  
  
The second time he regained consciousness, early on the fifth day, she'd left. The hospital was secure enough that Moran would have some difficulty getting access if he wanted to to finish his impulsive attempt. And she expected Sherlock to be sufficiently recovered that he could handle whatever hamhanded attempts Moran made.  
  
The diamonds went with her, naturally.  
  
For one day, she returns to the disguise she'd adopted in Montenegro, that of the retiring wealthy tourist, but it doesn't last. The guise she'd worn so easily for the last six, eight months, is suddenly ill-fitting, irritating, and she discards it by sunrise the next morning.  
  
By then she's found an emptyheaded heiress vacationing at the hotel, and engages in some self-indulgent misbehaviour, the likes of which said heiress' handlers would no doubt have to resign over if they came to light.  
  
At night, she contemplated options, and eventually sent a text into the dark.  
  
`We both know He isn't your problem, Sebastian. Your real problem is you need someone to hold your leash.`  
  
And the next few days are taken up by the heiress and by transforming some of those diamonds into cash, and funneling it through a particularly eager to please banker to buy up just enough of a certain casino in Las Vegas to make her point to one Sebastian Moran.  
  
Eventually, the message comes that she has not at all been waiting for, that one Godfrey Norton is being discharged from Princess Margaret Hospital with a clean bill of health and a prescription for Vicodin. As soon as the message comes, Irene makes her own arrangements to leave Nassau.  
  
She's sitting at the airport, cool and stylish and unflappable, the bright tropical sun glinting off the deep red of her dyed hair, when the text comes.  
  
`I'm not the boss. I don't play your little word games. What do you want?`  
  
She smiles and rises from her seat, slipping the phone back into her pocket as she looks out on the airport. It was, after all, exactly the response she wanted. She refuses to admit that there is a certain hollowness to it, a certain sense that this particular game is far easier, and far less satisfying.  
  
  
He throws away the remainder of his food, finding it all rather unsettling on his stomach. In a way, having the Woman around was a positive. He could see the effect of lack of sleep and eating on her, and therefore translate that into taking somewhat better care of himself. Now, he finds he has little appetite.  
  
He sighs and tucks his hands into the pockets of his cool, off-white trousers. With the blond in his hair, his cheap reflective sunglasses, and the white trousers and shirt, he almost looks like he could just be any tourist, even with the sling holding his arm immobile. (The sling was initially removed, though he remembers the _last_ time he ignored advice, and puts it back on grudgingly. He can't lose another 11 days to stubbornness. And, really, it's not as if the Woman would know.)  
  
He steps to the outside waiting area of the airport and sees her instantly. It is not because she stands out of the crowd, but because of how easily she blends in. She could easily be one of the tourists heading for the new Club Med on the island, sitting near other tourists ignoring the students and natives waiting for the plane.  
  
He's certainly not pleased to see her, despite what the raise in his pulse might say. He's certainly not pleased, despite the fact that he can't stop the slight upturn of his lips. He sits down in one of the cheap plastic chairs, watching the small runway. Not next to her, mind. Simply outside, where it's cooler.  
  
  
She notices him the moment he steps outside. She doesn't notice because she's looking for him, not because she's _hoping_ to see him, but because she's caught herself looking around her, observing the crowd with a more discerning eye than she had before. She still could tell at a glance what they liked, but a part of her has gotten rather used to remembering, to picking out the details, even though there was no one to play the game with.  
  
The fact that she has begun to notice is irritating, if useful; it is, after all, an admission that he has wormed his way quite thoroughly under her skin. So when she stands, stretches, the light cotton of her dress fluttering at her knee in the faint tropical breeze, she tells herself it is simply because she has been sitting for a long moment and needs to stand, not because she is hiding a smile or needing a moment to school her expression back to the boredom of the tourist.  
  
Still, she crosses the waiting area, and as she passes him pauses, as if suddenly struck by a stray thought. "Do you have change for a twenty dollar note, _monsieur_?" she asks, the Parisenne back in her voice.


	7. Second Chances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An American tourist and a French tourist exchange money and cigarettes in a small, sea-side town. Montenegro was a world away, but Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes remain the same as they have always been, with perhaps a few more scars than before. But will their partnership in San Salvador fall out the same way as it had in Kotor, or have the wounds that have scarred them cut too deep?

He pats his pockets, as if suddenly looking for his wallet.  
  
"You know," he says, his accent now American---what a lovely contrast from Montenegro, he thinks---"I think I might."  
  
He fumbles through his wallet and produces a few American bills and a few Bahamian, both good in this airport.  
  
"Cigarette machine?" he prompts with a small smile.   
  
  
She reaches into her purse, amethyst and gold on her finger winking in the light, and produces a crisp American twenty dollar bill. Exactly the sort of thing one got from a banker, if one had recently exchanged large sums of money. Her own mouth twitches with the nearly successful attempt to hide a small, pleased smile. "If only they had one here," she answers. "Unless you're willing to share."   
  
  
He hands her the bills and takes the crisp bill. Easy to deduce where it came from. She certainly hasn't been idle while he's been in hospital, at least. He'd ask her what happened, but he'd rather work it out, rather piece it together with what he can see from her and the clues clinging to her like sweat across her brow.  
  
He fishes out a pack of cigarettes and offers her one.  
  
"They'll kill you, you know," he says.   
  
  
She watches him take the bill, long fingers against the crisp paper, and has absolutely no doubt that he is already trying to figure out which bank the bill had come from. Her smile does grow, then, with a sharp touch of challenge and a knowing look as she meets his eye again.  
  
Her fingertips graze his as she accepts the cigarette, but the accent remains firmly in place. "So do many things. I rather like my odds."   
  
  
"Living dangerously, then."  
  
It's a moment of pure indulgence, her fingertips grazing his. He takes in the feel of her skin, and imagines examining each nail, every pore, and working out what she's done. What _misbehaviors_ she's been up to in the last week and a half.  
  
Yes, all right, perhaps he missed her.  
  
He puts a cigarette in his mouth and lights it. He offers her the light.   
  
  
"I'm hardly the only one."  
  
She leans in towards him, cigarette at her lips, for the light. The gesture is nowhere near as practiced as his, though it remains familiar, a habit long given up along with ideas of a career in law. Once lit, she takes a slow drag from the cigarette, and nearly imperceptible tension leeches from her spine, from the set of her shoulders.   
  
She's glad to see him, after all.  
  
She could, of course, argue it was the nicotine. An obvious lie, but then so was asking for change.   
  
  
He lets out a short laugh. Practiced, acting.  
  
"Yes, I don't think I'll be playing any tennis once I get to the island. One too many mishaps in other parts of the world."  
  
A small plane traffics towards their waiting area, and an uncomfortable looking Jamaican woman in a purple satin air hostess uniform lowers the small staircase for them. The students leap to their feet, excited at the prospect of travel, while the tourists look bored, already ready to be in their air conditioned hotel rooms.  
  
"Norton," he says around his cigarette, extending his good hand to her. "Godfrey Norton."   
  
  
A raised eyebrow at that; she hadn't expected him to keep the alias. She takes his hand, her fingertips ghosting over the pulse point in his wrist, and smiles, every inch the friendly tourist.   
  
"Angelique," she answers. "Heading to San Salvador, _Monsieur_ Norton?"   
  
  
"Yep," he says, popping the 'p' with his bright American accent. "Doing some research on the south side with Georgia University."  
  
It was painfully easy to find out which universities were going to the island this time of year. Some would stay for weeks or months at a time. Georgia University was already there, though a few people would arrive off and on during their eight-week stay.  
  
"You working on any scientific research out there, Angelique?"   
  
  
She takes another drag from the cigarette, then gestures negligently with it, streaming smoke and earning herself an irritated look from the woman welcoming passengers onto the plane. "That would depend on your definition of scientific," she answers.  
  
"At the moment, I'm more interested in adventure and company."   
  
  
"I imagine I can lend you a bit of both," he says with a small, purposefully flirtatious smile. He tosses the cigarette down and flattens it. He pulls out his ticket to offer to the woman welcoming passengers. "7C."  
  
The plane is small, holding only around 30 or so passengers and crew. No air conditioning, cramped quarters, but this is all very normal for the planes going to the tiny Bahamian island. He takes his seat and waits for the Woman to step on board as well.   
  
  
Irene waits until he has stepped on board the plane to discard her own cigarette, until three other people (two college students, one of them with more ambition than sense, the other with too restraint to ever be adventurous, and a serial divorcee) had boarded to offer the attendant her own ticket, still under the name Irene Norton.  
  
The plane is far smaller than the one that had brought them to Nassau and, perhaps unsurprisingly, she finds that 7B is just across the narrow aisle from Sherlock Holmes.  
  
"Selling yourself short, for once?" she murmurs before slipping into her seat. "I think I've had far more than a 'bit' of either of late."   
  
  
"Have you?" he asks, straightening his lap belt and adjusting his sling. "I hadn't noticed."  
  
He would tell her about the surgery, about his recovery, but that seems dull, obvious. She, no doubt, has heard enough about it. She must have been aware that he was leaving, otherwise she'd have had no reason to come here at all.  
  
Though, something is missing.  
  
"Traveling alone?" he asks.   
  
  
She settles into her seat, ignoring the heavyset businessman still buttoned up in his suit to her left and the way his eyes linger on the curve of her leg before he adjusts himself. She knows about the surgery, of course, had known most of the details, and his colouring and general demeanor spoke even more of his recovery.  
  
Though she is surprised that he's kept the sling.  
  
The question, however, makes her give him a sidelong look across the narrow aisle, a frown threatening at the corner of her mouth. "Would I have reason not to?"   
  
  
"No," he says, casually, though the slight raise of his eyebrow does speak to his surprise at that. "Just consider it my own curiosity." He finishes that with another flirtatious smile.  
  
He hates flirting so obviously. The Woman is far more suited to spar with, for mental battles than for simple flirting.  
  
"Wouldn't want another blond-haired traveler to steal you away," he adds. He knows the dark roots are starting to show in his hair, and for someone else, it might appear that he is insecure about this fact, rather than specifically mentioning the missing blonde stewardess.   
  
  
She remains confused for a moment, trying to fit his obvious surprise into what she _does_ know. Mary had, for the past week and a half, effectively slipped her mind. She had had more pressing things to think about upon leaving the airport, then after leaving the hospital, had studiously _not_ thought about anything that related to Sherlock Holmes.  
  
But he mentions the blond traveler at the time the stewardess is closing the door to the plane, and that tugs at her memory, and it clicks. "Seems unlikely, as I don't know many others that fit the description."  
  
  
Doesn't she? He'd been certain from the glances that the Woman gave the stewardess that she'd attempt to recruit her into whatever the hell it was she was trying to build in the wake of Jim's death. Perhaps he'd been wrong.  
  
But there is no evidence of the stewardess on the Woman's person at all. Not that she left much evidence of anything---that was part of what made the Woman different than so many other people---but still. He'd have noticed _something_.  
  
The plane starts to traffic, ready to take off. It's only an hour or so flight to the small island, and, hopefully, to some answers from his contact there.   
  
  
She had meant to snare the stewardess; she would have been useful. But that particular plan had been discarded, had been lost, with a constant touch on her wrist as he'd drifted on the cusp of consciousness.  
  
He'd call it foolish sentiment, no doubt. She'd never tell him.  
  
But the plane is taxiing and as it does, Irene tenses, a part of her mind recalling the sickening lurch of the last flight she's taken, and despite her mental insistence that _nothing was wrong_ , body memory was far more primordial and was having absolutely none of it.  
  
She tenses, and forces herself to relax, but not before the leering businessman on her left notices and gives her a look of calculating sympathy and rests a hand on hers in attempted comfort.  
  
Irene sighs silently. This was going to be an abominably long trip.   
  
  
Sherlock notices the tension, and in reality he can understand where it comes from. His own discomfort on the plane is avoided by playing his internal game with people and their luggage, but the limited passenger list makes that a terribly short one. He moves on to focus on the structure of the plane and its exits, and how easily a plane like this could crash into the waters separating Nassau from San Salvador. It's only marginally more comforting than thinking about their last plane ride. He keeps his expression calm, however, and the Jamaican woman sleeping next to him doesn't stir.  
  
The airport in San Salvador is on the west side of the small island and is, in relation to the other airports they have traveled together, unbelievably small. The plane's landing is rough, but from the expressions on the other passengers' faces, this is a very normal experience. He decides that his tourist-professor persona would be uncomfortable with such a bumpy ride, and allows himself to show some of his anxiety.  
  
The airport is nothing more than a small hut separating the runway from where the buses (for the club) and the beat-up blue lorries (for the science base) pick up their passengers. The sun is sharp and bright, and as Sherlock steps out, he can see several kestrels lining the telephone lines above the airport.   
  
  
In the hour flight, the businessman attempts to make conversation and inept flirtations three times, and Irene catches him staring at parts of her anatomy at least six. The wealthy dilettante tourist persona required her to at least listen to the conversation, and make some smiling, vaguely flirtatious remark in return to the first two, though by the time he's leered at her breasts for the third time, Irene allows Angelique to be outraged, and spends the rest of the flight pointedly ignoring him.  
  
So it was with some relief when the plane taxied to a halt that Irene stood, stretching, and headed down the steps of the plane. She blinks in the bright sun, and comes to a stop naturally a step and a half behind and to the left of Sherlock Holmes. "To the research then, _monsieur_?" she asks lightly, nodding to the waiting transportation.   
  
  
He gives her a smile and nods, heading over to one of the lorries and pulling the door open. Inside, the floorboards are littered with sand, and the vinyl interiors are torn heavily. He judges that the vehicle can't be more than a few years old, but it's seen a lot of use in that short amount of time.  
  
The moment he shuts the door, he turns to her and drops the American accent immediately.  
  
"Sold the diamonds," he says. "Implemented more of your plan?"   
  
  
His accent drops, and in return, the French tourist's flirty smile falls away to reveal an expression he was no doubt more familiar with, Irene Adler's razor sharp smile. She knows that he asks to tell her he expected her to, but she also realizes he asks because he isn't certain what her plan is, that he's fishing for clues.  
  
And that deepens her smile.  
  
She takes a deliberate step back from the scientists' transportation and heads for the open bed of the lorry. "Let's have dinner."  
  
And like everything that has ever been between them, the three words are invitation and challenge both, and she knows he'll hear it as it was meant, an opportunity to find out.   
  
  
He's never truly understood sexual desire, and he imagines it will elude him for the rest of his life, which is fine. However, with those words, he decides if it were even remotely viable, he'd probably have her right here in the cabin of the lorry, with all of her mysteries and plans swirling in his mind and unreadable on her face or body. She does seem to know exactly what he likes.  
  
He starts the vehicle and awkwardly moves his uninjured arm around the wheel in order to put it in drive.  
  
"Crime does seem to bring the best out of you," he says, and while his voice remains utterly neutral, he finds himself smiling as he pulls them out of the airport lot and onto the one long road that follows the diameter of the entire island.


	8. Equivalent Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Together again, Sherlock and Irene find themselves navigating the treacherous waters of their plans, his to destroy Moriarty's web and hers to salvage it, and the unbidden eddies of sentiment that they refuse to acknowledge.

Someday, she'll look back on this holiday and marvel at how quickly they managed to be caught in each other's orbits. Or perhaps she never will, because they will always catch each other this way, always snare each other with little more than a handful of words and a look.   
  
He'd insisted it wasn't love, and she agreed. They were simply themselves. Two extraordinary people in an ordinary world who found in each other endless diversion and endless fascination. They were infatuation and addiction, connection and contention. 'Love' was too simple a term, too simplistic a concept, for everything they did to each other. They were the Consulting Detective and the Woman, and everything else paled in comparison.  
  
It is, after all, the only explanation for the fact that she vaults over the back of the truck and into the bed before he begins driving.   
  
She tells herself that it'd simply be safer, to stay out of the way and relatively unknown before she forced Moran into a meeting at the resort. And perhaps, if pressed, she might admit the company was better.  
  
She settles back, for the moment simply letting the motion of the truck and the salt air wash over her. Meters roll by before Irene slides open the small window separating the driver's cab from the truck bed. "Eleven days, was it?"  
  
Carefully casual, as if she were guessing. She isn't.   
  
  
He drives along the road, not bothering to avoid the many _Grapsus grapsus_ , small land crabs, that scurry in the way of the trucks' tires. To the side of the truck, the ocean sits as their constant companion on the right. The island itself can be circumvented in about two hours, and most of the beach and rock faces have been completely untouched by anyone apart from the few natives on the island. The Woman sits in the bed, and despite the vehicle separating them, he could almost swear he could _feel_ her there. O, he would, at least. Were he a more romantic man. Logically, he's more simply _aware_ of her presence.  
  
She pulls the window aside and there's a spray of cool, saline air that breaks through the stifling lorry cabin.  
  
"Eleven days, ten hours," he says. "More or less." Or exact, considering it is Sherlock.   
  
  
"Not that you're counting."  
  
She knows he can't see her from the driver's seat; that was, after all, part of the appeal, but she has no doubt he knows exactly what expression is on her face. Smug and infinitely pleased. And no doubt it irritates him to have her point it out.  
  
Another few meters pass in wordless silence, and she watches white topped waves lap against the wild beach. "Three nurses were transferred to different wards after you woke up. How many of them were because you mentioned their affairs with the surgeons or their pilfering painkillers?"  
  
It isn't admitting anything; he had to know she'd kept tabs on the hospital even after disappearing.   
  
  
"They requested it, actually," he replies, swerving just a little in order to avoid hitting one of the larger land crabs, but another scurries across, ending its life under a different tire. "When I told them that if they didn't, I _would_."  
  
He wonders how much she's hiding, how much he's giving away by taking her here. It shouldn't be too difficult for her to work out who his contact is, and Tom has always been swayed by a pretty face.  
  
Mycroft would tell him not to bother with the Woman. To keep away from her, to keep his knowledge safe and locked up, like all of Mycroft's secrets. Deep inside of vaults in Whitehall. But Sherlock has not and never will be his brother. The Woman stays as long as they both want her there.  
  
The single road turns slightly, and new, tall agave bushes appear on the forested side of the island. It would be painfully easy to murder someone here, he thinks. So many places to hide them.  
  
"I assume the stewardess vanished," he says. "Moran?"   
  
  
She laughs quietly at his answer, and replays their route in her mind. It isn't terribly difficult a route, made easier by the simple fact that there didn't seem to be alternate routes on this island besides 'clockwise' and 'counter-clockwise'.   
  
The mention of the stewardess makes her frown, and Irene mulls over the question for a moment. She doesn't tell him she'd forgotten abut the stewardess in the wake of his stay in the hospital. Instead, she shrugs. "Likely, unless the girl herself decided to follow us to Nassau from Hong Kong on her own initiative." Another pause. "I'll ask when I see him."  
  
She hasn't, of course, sent a response to Moran's question of what she wanted. The answer was simple. The trick was to be in the delivery.   
  
  
Of course she's continued talking to Moran. He wants to feel especially bitter over this, because his shoulder _does_ still hurt, and he's lost over a week because of this idiotic injury. At the same time, she wouldn't be the Woman if she simply listened to what he said. She never took to his manipulations---almost never. It was part of her appeal, though he thought it might end up being part of her downfall.  
  
"I shan't be there for that, I think," he says. "Meetings between him and I haven't gone well in the past."  
  
  
If she'd simply listened to what he said, they wouldn't be here, on this little island. She no doubt have long gone for Sydney, still drifting without mooring through death, and he'd have dismantled more of Moriarty's web. She can't say she regrets it.  
  
"Oh? And here I thought that was simply because you were unprepared last time."   
  
  
"He's a live wire, Woman," he says. "Loose cannon---choose your metaphor. Dangerous because he makes himself unpredictable. No doubt mentally unhinged, considering who his former employer was."  
  
He chews a little on his bottom lip, grateful that the Woman can't see any sign of his anxiety. At least they know where he is. Not out, not trying to find---  
  
"John didn't end up marrying," he says.   
  
  
"Is that supposed to be a deterrent?" It isn't, not for her, and he knows that. She expects him to know it, but he points it out anyway, as if--  
  
Ah.  
  
She lets the simple statement, the actual crux of the whole thing, linger in the salt-laden air. "The visiting American professor would call that cold feet, I imagine."   
  
  
"He didn't specify as to who stopped the entire arrangement," he says. "But yes, I imagine you're right."  
  
No, she wouldn't be deterred. Not the Woman. All the same, for _him_ there are only certain wires he'll play with, a certain amount of danger until---until---  
  
Oh, hell. The things that attract her to danger are the same that attract him.  
  
"Punch him in the face for me, would you?"   
  
  
She says nothing in response until a cluster of buildings, neat and precise and all but screaming academia and research in their angular regularity, appear ahead.   
  
"I'd imagine it'd be more satisfactory if you delivered it in person."   
  
  
"I didn't think you'd want me joining in your affairs," he says. He turns in at the sign: Gerace Research Center. A few students are milling about, it's clearly lunchtime at the large cafeteria. Sherlock parks the lorry in front and steps out with his bag.  
  
A lean Jamaican woman in a bright satin dress that looks unbelievably hot in this weather approaches. He puts back on his accent and gives her a wide smile.  
  
"Dr. Godfrey Norton," he says. He gestures back to the Woman and considers giving her a name of his own choosing. It will, no doubt, irritate her. She prefers to be in control of her own life.  
  
"Anthea Holmes, geologist," he introduces. "My research assistant."   
  
  
She climbs out from the truck bed easily, and it is the only thing that keeps her from introducing herself and by the time she has both feet on the ground, it is too late. She offers the Jamaican woman a handshake and slips on a fainter French accent than flirtatious Angelique. Someone whose English was more practiced, more touched with American.  
  
"A pleasure," Irene says, waiting until the woman has turned back to him to glare at Sherlock. Their discussion of Moran, however, is not forgotten in her momentary irritation.   
  
  
Sherlock only just hides his smirk at her irritation. There's something delightful in being able to annoy her, as he imagines she feels when she manages to annoy him.  
  
The Jamaican woman apologizes, but there is only one room available for Sherlock, though it does contain an air conditioning unit and two beds. Sherlock does have the grace to feign awkwardness.  
  
"That'll be fine," he says. The internet in the library is also out, it appears. And Tom was on the other side of the island and would be back by the evening, if not the following day.   
  
  
Irene makes a mental note of the exchange even as she makes the appropriate noises of exasperated resignation at the woman's mention of the sleeping situation. The sort of thing a research assistant would have heard before, though not pleased to be hearing it again.   
  
Without internet, it'd be more difficult if she wants to send Moran any messages. A glance down at her mobile. No signal. Of course not.  
  
She asks about cellular service, and the woman gestures towards the beach, where at least one lanky, sunburned youth is circling, hand and mobile phone raised in supplication to the gods. Irritating.  
  
Beneath her breath, she murmurs to him, "I'm to be a Holmes now, is it?"   
  
  
"I've been in the hospital the last eleven days," he says. "Forgive my lack of creativity."  
  
The buildings are lined with large conch shells and chunks of coral skeleton as a pathway. They're led to a green-pained door with a 2 on it. Inside is a basic room with concrete floors that have a healthy layer of tracked-in sand. The windows are covered in thick curtains and have a cheap, squealing air conditioning unit attached inside.  
  
"Lunch is at noon," the woman tells them. "Dinner at 5. Breakfast at 9."   
  
  
"Expect me to believe hospital television is more riveting than what your mind can come up with?"  
  
There is already far too much sand on this island for Irene's tastes, but to show it would be to be irritated, to let him _win_ , and so her expression remains pleasant as she turns to the woman and nods in acknowledgment. "I assume if the professor doesn't make it in time, he'll have to forage for sustenance?" she asks the woman.   
  
  
The woman laughs at this, and Sherlock lets out a small chuckle. The door shuts behind the woman. Sherlock scratches his arm. Bugs have had their way with him already. It's going to be a long couple of days at this rate.  
  
"The only food that comes to the island comes by ferry," he says. "Believe me, you and I won't want to miss it when it's time to eat."   
  
  
The door shuts, and despite the anemic squeaking air conditioning unit, there is a distinct difference between the saline warmth of the outdoors and the air inside the small room. Irene steps away from him and takes a seat on one of the two beds, curling her legs beneath her as she unstraps the pair of sandals from her feet. Entirely far too much sand.  
  
Her eyes remain on him, and the accent is discarded along with the shoes. "And if I'm not hungry?"   
  
  
"Plenty else to be done," he says with a smirk. He pulls the sling off of his arm and tosses it to the bed. His shoulder wails in protest, but it's hardly important here.   
  
  
She arches an eyebrow in response and pointedly keeps her eyes fixed on him. Still, despite that, there is no denying the telltale twitch of a smile tugging at her lips.  
  
"You're looking better, Mr. Holmes."   
  
  
"And you, Miss Adler."  
  
He steps over to her bed and reaches out to touch her. He considers her hair, her face, her throat. All intimate places, and hardly enough information there. He chooses the hand, instead. Fingers to her wrist. A gesture that's simple, and yet surprisingly informative and intimate.  
  
"You stayed," he says. "At the hospital. At least until after my surgery."   
  
  
When was the last time she'd kept that bit of information from him? The last time she'd turned her wrist so that his fingertips met bone rather than pulse? The answer doesn't come to mind, not immediately, and, perhaps more importantly, the answer wasn't 'now'.  
  
His hand is warm, in sharp contrast with the cold touch of his hand in Nassau, and there is no hiding the fact that her pulse speeds up, that she is relieved. "So you do remember," she answers lightly. "It was fifty-fifty whether or not you would."  
  
She doesn't tell him she stayed until she was certain he could handle whatever, or whoever, came his way. If he hasn't deduced it yet, she wasn't going to make it easier for him.   
  
  
"And which would you have preferred?" he asks, though he suspects she shan't tell him the answer. That's all right. He asks another question of the Woman that he suspects she shan't answer as well: "And where are you planning on meeting Moran?"  
  
The touch to her wrist is telling, that little trust they place in each other, showing of the pulse, of the change in skin temperature and dilation of eyes. It would be so easy to simply kiss or embrace to show affection, but he and the Woman have more than that. They deduce each other, and allow themselves to be deduced.   
  
  
She gets to her feet, and there is, as there always is, a care to the way she moves around him, a deliberateness to the amount of space between them. They are people who revel not in the physical contact, but in the intellectual, in the meaning behind a touch and an answered question. And it is precisely what they mutually like.  
  
A smirk tugs at the corner of her mouth, and the hand not held captive by the barely there touch of his fingertips on her wrist reaches up to trace along his face, following the now nigh invisible marks of where the assisted breathing mask had rested against his skin.  
  
"I thought you didn't want to be involved in my affairs.”   
  
  
The touch to his face is incredibly intimate, and he finds himself quickly off of the stable ground he believed he understood. He doesn't turn into her touch or move into it, nor does he pull away. He simply exists there, circling the Woman in the same way that she circles him. Though she is now and perhaps always will be more adept at the circling prey than he is. He always defaults to pouncing.  
  
"I don't," he replies, smoothly. "Though the thought of delivering that punch _is_ rather tempting."   
  
  
She enjoys flummoxing him. Never mind that they have proven over and over again just how evenly matched they are, there is still always that drive to throw him off his game. She knows that, too, is mutual.   
  
Still, she lets her hand fall back to her side, stepping away from him and breaking the tiny significant contact points between them. "And if I asked you to be involved in my affairs? Hypothetically, of course."   
  
  
He can't work her out. He wouldn't want to, he thinks. She's too perfect a mystery. She steps away and he steps forward, reaching out to touch the side of her cheek. Just enough to brush her cheekbone with the pads of his fingertips.  
  
"I would be aware that there was some alternative motive," he says, voice as cool and affectionate as if he were saying some sort of romantic line to her.   
  
  
She steps away and he steps forward, and she can feel every fingertip that he rests against her skin. This is how they dance with each other, in words and deductions and questions and mysteries and the touch of a fingertip.  
  
Dinner and dancing. How very ordinary.  
  
Irene smiles at that, and it is equal parts devious challenge and affection. She rests her own fingertips against his shirt, feeling warmth beneath the thin fabric. "And you'd no doubt want to find out what that motive was."   
  
  
"Always," he replies without any hesitation. "Though you've always been the mystery waiting for someone to unravel it."  
  
And he will always want to unravel it. No matter how obvious it might be that she wants him to follow, or whether or not unraveling said mystery is healthy, normal, or any of those other _boring_ words John Watson thinks are necessary in any sort of relationship.  
  
He makes the first move, leaning in to brush his lips against hers and---  
  
There's a sudden rap at the door.  
  
"Miss Holmes?" comes the Jamaican woman's voice from outside.


	9. The Web

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A momento of Montenegro has found its way to San Salvador, and its presence causes both Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler to rethink the partnership they find themselves ensnared in, and the end that must follow. But it has taken thousands of miles and a trip to the hospital to bring them to their current state. How much more will be necessary before they admit the obvious?

He makes the first move, but she is only a fraction of a second behind him, leaning up to meet him--  
  
And there is a knock on the door.  
  
She doesn't jump, though she does pull back, a wry touch to her smile as the interruption shatters the strange, fragile intimacy they find themselves caught in so often. "Hotel staff wouldn't interrupt," she murmurs as she steps around him to the door.   
  
In the two steps it takes to reach said door, she's donned the research assistant's disguise again, a veneer of bright friendliness over an obvious long-suffering patience. "Yes?" she asks, opening the door with a smile. A smile that slips ever-so-slightly as she sees the package the woman is holding.   
  
  
Sherlock controls himself from running to the door and snatching the package away from her. Scrawled at the top is "S Holmes: Please Hold For Retrieval." Labeled for Gerace Research Center. He'd always planned to come back and pick it up here, but he'd allowed himself to get too focused on the Woman, on the game.  
  
"Thank you," he says from his place inside of the room.  
  
He tries to keep his expression still even as he wills the Woman to take the package.   
  
  
She realizes he recognizes what the package is the moment he speaks, and it takes another moment before she recognizes the handwriting on the package. "Family can be so attached to first names," she says to the woman by way of flimsy explanation as she takes the package.   
  
The Jamaican woman nods, says something friendly and unremarkable and trite, relinquishing the package, and Irene leans against the door frame for a moment to examine the package before stepping back to close the door.  
  
Her finger runs over the postmark and she arches an eyebrow at him. "Montenegro?"   
  
  
The package, dropped off in a mailbox on his way to the opera what seems, right now, to have been an eternity ago. He can't honestly remember why he chose _then_ to leave it, though he imagines it has to do with making certain it wouldn't end up in the hands of the Woman who now possesses it.  
  
He extends his hand. "Yes, that's mine."  
  
It's strangely reminiscent of the first time they met, her with her hand extended, stating that the camera phone was hers, and he with his ego and nonchalance refusing to relinquish it. He can only hope that shan't happen now.   
  
  
Perhaps it's the way he answers. Or the fact that he is standing there with his hand outstretched, but she is oddly reminded of a similar scene, of roles reversed a lifetime ago.   
  
"Is it? I believe I'm the only Holmes here at the moment."   
  
  
"By name only," he replies. "I sincerely doubt nuptials are in either of our lives any time soon, Woman."  
  
He stretches his hand out a little further.  
  
"Please." There's very little sincerity in the word, but he knows it's worked in the past.   
  
  
"Rather difficult for the deceased," she agrees, leaning casually against the closed door. Irene flips the package over in her hands, examining it. She makes no move to actually open it, however.  
  
"It's been here nearly a month. And postmarked the day _after_ you asked me for change for a twenty euro note. The post office was still open before I came to your hotel, so it couldn't have been an errand before then."   
  
  
"Not enough time then," he admits. He wonders if she could work out what it is simply by turning it over. He can only hope not. "I had no intention of being _obvious_ , then."  
  
He locks his eyes with hers and refuses to look at the package, refuses to acknowledge its importance. And it _is_ important.  
  
"You don't want what's in there yet," he says. "You won't need it."   
  
  
She arches an eyebrow at him, taking in the way he's steadily refusing to look down at the package in her hands. The package that she currently has absolutely no intention of handing over. At least not yet.  
  
She turns it over in her hands, testing the weight of it. Nothing out of the ordinary about that. "Oh? Presuming to know what I want and need now, are we, Mr. Holmes?"   
  
  
He lets out a short sigh through his nose. There's no password on the package, nothing keeping her out of it, unlike the camera phone and himself.  
  
"If you open it---"  
  
He doesn't quite want to consider it, not yet.  
  
"Sherlock Holmes comes back from the dead."   
  
  
She stares at him for a long, silent moment, the almost playful amusement draining from her expression. The mysterious package remains still in her hands, but her attention is fixed on him.  
  
She knows what will bring him back from the dead, which means she has a nebulous guess that whatever was in the package had to do with the spider and his web.   
  
"What do you want, Sherlock?"   
  
  
"The package," he says. "Unopened."  
  
He should be ready to go back. To go back to 221b and John Watson and his familiar crimes and---and---  
  
And yet he isn't. He doesn't want this holiday to be over, he doesn't want to give the Woman up to the spider's web quite yet. Part of him is still convinced that he may, eventually, be willing to give it to her. To stop fighting what it is she clearly wants. But---not---yet.   
  
  
It's the tacit admission behind his words that she hears, not the fact that he wants the package back. The fact that _he_ doesn't want Sherlock Holmes to come back from the dead, not just yet.  
  
She takes a step towards him, the single motion eating up the distance between them, and rests the edge of the package against his chest, but not quite letting go just yet.  
  
"Say please."   
  
  
His reply is just shy of petulant.  
  
"I already have."   
  
  
She smiles.  
  
"You didn't mean it that time."   
  
  
No, he didn't. It is reassuring to know that she _knew_ that. But then again, she's not one for missing something so obvious. To assume she would would be an insult. Primarily to her, mind, though part of the insult would go to Sherlock for his irritating and uncontrollable _sentiment_ towards her.  
  
"I mean very little of what I say," he says, utterly unrepentant. "I'm dishonest to you all of the time. Primarily through omission."   
  
  
"And yet you manage to be honest by the same omission," she retorts with a self-satisfied smile. That has been obvious for weeks. Perhaps longer, but only since their re-acquaintance did it come into such sharp, obvious relief.  
  
"I'm still waiting."   
  
  
He reaches a hand up to curl his fingers around one end of the package. He shan't pull it from her hands, that would defeat the purpose of trying to get her to release it on her own.  
  
He attempts to distract.  
  
"Let's have dinner."   
  
  
There is a gleam in her eyes at his attempted distraction.   
  
"You'll have to do better than that."   
  
  
Which means he _can_ do better than that, which means she _is_ going to give up the package. It's all a matter of time, now, and of him not saying something too overtly smug in order to throw her off. That will be the difficult part. Smugness is his favorite state of being.  
  
However, something occurs to him. Something she asked earlier and he answered. He hates the idea of putting the power in the Woman's hand, but---  
  
No, he'll stop himself from asking what it is she wants. It may give him the package sooner, if he's right, but on the very slim chance that he's wrong, he can't give it to her, not yet.  
  
He sighs. "Please."   
  
  
He gives her what she asks for with so little protest that there is no question in Irene's mind that he has an ulterior motive. After all, he'd admitted as much himself, that he was constantly keeping things from her, in the same way she did with him.  
  
And, of course, she wants to know what that ulterior motive is. So her smile deepens, and she lets go of the package and the secrets he's keeping. No doubt he'll expect her to try something else. She wouldn't be The Woman otherwise.  
  
"Now was that so difficult?"  
  
She already knows the answer, but she asks anyway.   
  
  
He takes the package and steps away, ignoring her small jab at him. He turns to the dingy door that separates the main room from the informal bathroom and shuts it behind him.  
  
The bathroom is not air conditioned and has a dull, mildew smell about it. It consists of the toilet, the stand-in shower stall that has a crusting of salt and sand along the edge (as well as, apparently, the homes of several brightly-colored spiders.)  
  
He tears open the package and holds it up. It's a map of the world, with a variety of pins and notes attached into it. Moriarty's web, torn down and folded away when the Woman came back into his life. It had been part of his every move, and now it seemed like a liability. He looks over destinations to send it to again, and chooses one. Moscow. If the Woman is still with him by then, he tells himself, he'll give her the web. All the contacts she could ever need, all the information to hold all of them by their throats.  
  
He'll give it to her then and he'll go back to London.  
  
He finds himself folding the paper up more slowly this time. Sentiment. It's aggravating. He tucks the package under his arm and heads back out the door.   
  
  
The exterior door is open when he returns, and she sits outside, staring out into the middle distance with an unlit cigarette between her fingers (obviously pilfered from his pack). She knows there is only one thing that is keeping Sherlock Holmes from returning from the dead, and the fact that he said as much confirmed her suspicions.  
  
But then she'd given it back, with little more than a 'please' that was admittedly less than sincere. It said far too much about this tenuous, ephemeral state of being they've caught themselves in, that she _wants_ it to continue. Never mind that she'd stayed at the hospital, never mind that he'd come to Hong Kong, never mind that she'd left Montenegro with him in the first place.   
  
No, her own sentiment bothers her, and as she stares out, Irene is, for once, trying very hard not to think. To be, for a moment, utterly ordinary, just a thoughtful woman in a sundress, sitting outside on a warm tropical day.  
  
It doesn't take. She speaks as soon as she hears him emerge from the washroom. "Seems an inconvenient place for a government contact," she muses. "One of your brother's personal contacts?"   
  
  
"Tom runs Gerace," he says. "And therefore basically runs San Salvador. A small island, admittedly, but according to Mycroft it's as important as the length of Nefertiti's nose."  
  
Whatever reference that is. Sherlock has never understood the silly things that Mycroft allows to clutter his head sometimes.  
  
Telling the Woman that's she's beautiful would be irrelevant, despite how blatantly obvious it is at a moment like this. The Bahamian sun in her hair, the slight breeze moving the sundress---she's quite lovely. But marking on it, stating something so _obvious_ would be far beneath them.  
  
A heavyset redheaded American who looked like she'd had far too much sun steps towards them, an expectant look on her face. Sherlock doesn't hesitate, he promptly offers her a cigarette.  
  
"Go away," he says to her. She's apparently so grateful for the cigarette that she doesn't even bother looking offended as she walks off.  
  
To the Woman, he says: "Let's walk to the beach. Less crowded."   
  
  
Perhaps it isn't there at all and she is simply imagining it, but the disdain at his parroting of the elder Holmes' words makes Irene smile, the hint of affection unknowingly softening her expression. Instead of gesturing for him to offer her his hand to help her up, she remains seated for the moment, watching the girl hurry away.  
  
"A trip to the tropics and a walk to the beach," she murmurs, brushing sand from the hem of her dress. "Never expected you to play the romantic."   
  
  
"Romance is irrelevant," he says. "However, I think our conversations require privacy."  
  
He pauses and considers before he speaks again.  
  
"The walk also requires we pass a postal box."   
  
  
His response is exactly as she would have expected, and Irene laughs quietly, once, as she gathers herself and rises. She stops, however, at his next words, and for a moment considers him.  
  
She opens her mouth, pauses, and speaks. "Done with your secrets already?"  
  
It isn't what she had wanted to ask.   
  
  
"Saving them for later," he replies.  
  
But no. No, that isn't the right thing to say. It isn't right to admit that it _has_ to happen later. No, he has to keep things the way they are because---because---  
  
He turns and steps back into the room, waiting by the door to shut it should she follow him inside.   
  
  
Later.  
  
Strange how that single word falls so heavily, how it rings through her mind when he says it. Because it is the reminder that this will end, that they are both planning, in their own way, for that end. But it isn't _now_. They've both given in to ensure it wasn't now.  
  
So maybe, it doesn't matter so much to follow. She brushes sand from her feet as she steps over the threshold and back inside, feeling already as if she were fighting a losing battle.  
  
"Changed your mind about the beach?"   
  
  
She steps inside, he shuts the door. He tosses the package aside, onto the floor, and steps back into her space.  
  
"How long?" he demands, voice low and serious.


	10. Eleven Days

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is obvious what Sherlock Holmes has been doing the eleven days he was hospitalized in Nassau. But the Woman's time was perhaps better spent, and the specifics of how exactly she spent that time is another mystery in a long line of mysteries about Irene Adler. But is it a mystery Sherlock will be able to solve, or one that he is content to leave a mystery?

The barest twitch betrays her surprise, but Irene straightens her spine and glares back up at him. There is no reason to, other than that he is being demanding, but as far as she's concerned, it's enough.   
  
"To what reference point, Mr. Holmes?" she retorts.   
  
  
He straightens himself. No. No, he isn't ready to know when she's ready to go back. When she's ready to end the holiday. It could be now for all he knows, and that---he doesn't want that.  
  
He considers kissing her to end the conversation. His shoulder aches, but it's hardly a deterrent from physical contact with her. Again, for all he knows, it could be the last time if---but he doesn't want it to be the last time.  
  
He doesn't bother finishing his question, he simply steps away from her and goes back to pick up the package, already labeled for Moscow. To S. Holmes.   
  
  
She watches him straighten, watches as the set of his shoulders betray the decision he makes without him having to answer, and her eyes follow as he picks up the package, labeled for Moscow. There's nothing stopping her from leaving, she knows, nothing stopping her from waiting until he's mailed off the package to disappear and make her way to Russia.  
  
She knows, which means the thought has already occurred or would soon occur to him that it was a possibility, but there it is still, written and ready to be mailed again. But she won't leave, not yet. There's still too much to do, their game still too captivating.  
  
"What's to keep your contact from telling your brother you're still alive?" she says instead.   
  
  
"Simple," he says. "He's never met my brother. Not face-to-face. And I know what their phone conversations have been about. Enough to _properly impersonate him_." He says the last three words with a slight effete lilt to his voice, very reminiscent of his older brother.  
  
"There is only one person on this island who has met my brother and could cause some issue. Tayo Onesia. He lives in town and is, unfortunately, crucial to this little trip of ours. But he shan't be talking to Mycroft, either."   
  
  
"Too proper an impersonation and I may find my appetite for dinner gone permanently, Mr. Holmes."  
  
She takes a seat on the bed again, leaning back on her arms as she studies him. There's a spark, a gleam, in her eyes as she considers his words, and her lips twitch in a smirking smile.   
  
"Is that why you chose Anthea?" She'd gotten the name indirectly from John Watson that day at Battersea. He'd called her hired driver that, and it had been obvious from his initial assumption that it was Mycroft Holmes' doing that Anthea was a name or a code used by his operatives.   
  
  
Anthea.  
  
Sherlock has no memory of this name, nor of the woman that Mycroft had hired before. He'd seen her reactions with Mycroft and deemed her not remotely worth remembering, blanking her from his memory entirely.  
  
"Greek?" he asks.   
  
  
A flicker of confusion ghosts over her face, but it is gone as quickly as it comes, the only remnant of its passing a slight furrowing of her brow. She shrugged. "Not a name you're familiar with?"   
  
  
"I'm assuming I should be," he replies, arching an eyebrow back at her. "Explain."   
  
  
A twitch of her lips in a hidden smile. "I should make you say please again."   
  
  
"I can't care enough about a name that silly," he says. "You'll either need to have more important information or try a bit harder for that sort of a response. He steps over to his bed to examine the sheets they'd included. Worn, threadbare. They'd do. The mattresses looked exceedingly uncomfortable, though in comparison to the hospital bed, he imagined they would feel heavenly.  
  
"When you try to make friends out here," he says. "Don't bother with Onesia. He's---difficult. One of Jim's pets before he took on Moran full time."   
  
  
"I'm surprised you care about names at all," she answers, running a finger along the rough thin sheet. Her fingertip comes away sand-free, which is a relief. Though she suspects that is a temporary state of affairs. "But the name of the assistant to the British Government seemed like something to keep in mind."  
  
She says nothing of Onesia; to acknowledge that would be to give away too much.   
  
  
" _Oh,_ " Sherlock says, acknowledging the gap in his memory. " _Her_ , yes. Hardly the most interesting of Mycroft's associates. I think he might name all of his new associates that."  
  
Or, it's entirely possible it is the same woman and Sherlock continually deletes her.  
  
"When we leave this place, I assume you'll be meeting Moran," he says, by way of dramatically changing the conversation.   
  
  
She hadn't bothered to slip her shoes back on when she'd gone to sit outside, and now Irene draws her knees up to her chest, watching him steadily as she does so. "You can assume anything you like," she answers, steadily refusing to give him the information he keeps seeking. "But if you want actual answers, I'd suggest asking."   
  
  
"I don't have to ask," he says, easily. "I'll simply work it out."   
  
  
A twitch at the corner of her mouth. She's enjoying this, and doesn't see any need to hide the fact.  
  
"Assuming you can."   
  
  
He raises an eyebrow, vague insult crossing his face. She's insinuating he can't, of course. He has very little to go on, apart from what she's wearing now and the fact that she's here at all.  
  
"Your persona is French," he says. "Now, disguises always reveal who we are, and so you're working on yourself when building this."   
  
  
The twitch becomes the beginning of a smile. "Or the French is just a reference," she contradicts. "And that isn't the part of the disguise I'm building on."   
  
  
"No, no, it isn't that simple," he says. He finds himself smiling as well. "You plan, Woman. Far more than most. Everything is one step forward, one motion towards the next. No _references_ would be without meaning."  
  
He considers her appearance, stretching out a hand to visualize everything in his mind as he speaks. "Clothing says first world country, designer and shape says European."   
  
  
"Now you're being flattering, Mr. Holmes. You _must_ be stumped."  
  
Her smile grows, and as he stretches out a hand, she untucks herself and rises to her feet. Their quarters are small, but there's more than enough space for her to slip around him, to stand directly behind him. She switches accents with a minimal amount of difficulty. Iberian Spanish. "Or European designers were simply what was in the shops."   
  
  
"Not in Nassau, and certainly not with eleven days to purchase anything you'd want from the whole of the internet," he says.  
  
He can feel her right behind him and part of him wants to turn around, to look directly at her. He doesn't need to, he reminds himself. He can see her perfectly in his memory.  
  
"Lipstick shade," he says. "Very definitive. Very Dominatrix."   
  
  
"Very Irene Adler," she agrees. She suspects he is consciously keeping himself from turning around, and she takes a step closer. It's utterly unnecessary, but she enjoys pushing him to his limits as he does her.  
  
"But you're making an assumption you shouldn't."   
  
  
He replays the moments in his head, the accent, the way she moves.  
  
"Parisian," he says. "European is the assumption I'm making. The 'r' in your accent isn't soft enough for it."  
  
He wants to ask her to speak in the accent again, to get another few words, a closer clue, but that would be _cheating_. It would be too easy.  
  
She's pushing him mentally and physically, stepping closer to him. In a way, he is quite grateful she's behind him, she can't see how his eyes have dilated from the stimulation. Yes, the Woman knows what he likes. Very, _very_ well.   
  
  
She laughs, the sound rising from low in her throat at his answer. " _Parisienne_ , cosmopolitan, used to the finer things in life and loathing how sand gets absolutely everywhere," she agrees.  
  
Another step, and she can practically feel the tension radiating off him like body heat as his mind works. She rests a hand on his back, precisely over the spot where the bullet would have passed. "But that wasn't the assumption I was talking about."   
  
  
"Assuming that you've already planned to meet with him?" Sherlock queries. "Apart from as an eventuality, as it _must_ happen if you're to take him into our own web."   
  
  
Another laugh, and it is almost painfully obvious how much she is enjoying herself. "Now you're making even more assumptions," she admonishes. "But I was talking about your assumption that I had all eleven days to figure out a disguise."   
  
  
"Oh?" He sound somewhat surprised. What could he have been doing within those eleven days, then?   
  
"I know you weren't doting on me," he says, thinking aloud. "Though I know you waited in the hospital. You sold the diamonds, which means you needed to find a seller and make the transaction. You aren't carrying an enormous amount of money, though, which means you spent some of it and either invested, or made a very large purchase."  
  
He considers. "If you made a large, _unorthodox_ purchase, then you'd have had to have a different persona for that, not as much time to prepare for Angelique."   
  
  
Her hand trails along his shoulder blade as he speaks, slowly tracing its way from back to front. She is _very_ pleased by the direction of the conversation, by what he _isn't_ saying. That he hasn't worked out exactly what she's been doing just from the state of her clothes, who she's seen from the state of her hair. He'd gotten under her skin, and she under his, but there were still secrets they could keep.  
  
"Interesting guess," she says, with a subtle stress on the second word as her hand lingers on the entry wound. Her voice is a low murmur as she adds, "But just a guess all the same, isn't it?"   
  
  
The puzzle has always been his biggest draw into police work, or even into taking apart Moriarty's web. It's also one of the greatest draws to the Woman, because she is nothing if not a puzzle. It feels as though in their time apart, she has turned herself around and backwards, and everything he was quite certain he knew has moved from _quite certain_ to _not quite_. Little white question marks reappear over her and many of the things she does.  
  
He can feel her hand against his shoulder, and he can't stop himself from turning slightly, to look at her, to try to pull more of the pieces together. Where is she going? What is she planning?  
  
"You applied your own makeup," he says, though there isn't the same sort of brash confidence he usually has. It's a weak deduction, one that is so painfully _obvious_ it makes him want to cringe.   
  
  
He turns his head, and she takes a step toward him, keeping herself _just_ within his field of vision, but not far enough to be easily seen or thoroughly observed. But nothing could hide the sharp smile on her lips.  
  
She knows this is dangerous, to goad him into playing the game, to push and see if he knew what her plans were. Because to push was to bring into play the possibility that he learned what she planned, where she was going, that he would stop her.  
  
But the danger was what made this so thoroughly, unrepentantly thrilling a game to play.  
  
"As I have every day," she agrees. "Is that because I've been alone or because I haven't found anyone with those skills?"   
  
  
"Neither," he says, because that can be the _only_ answer when she presents him with two possibilities. "You haven't focused on that, you haven't had anyone who might read into the curve of lip liner or the uneven application of mascara."  
  
Which, he would note, she does not have. The Woman applies her makeup perfectly. Even with the heat and the uncomfortable flight, she _still_ looks poised.  
  
He leans in, turning his head to smell her hair. The smell of _her_ is distracting, and the salt air clinging is also diverting, but he can catch some remaining clues.  
  
"Upscale shampoo," he says. "Not a hotel brand."   
  
  
He's trying to goad her, she thinks. Goad her into slipping, into being offended that he can find any flaws in her makeup. So she swallows back the answer that comes to mind and steps further into the tiny space between them as he leans in towards her.  
  
Dangerous, to give him that much information.  
  
"Like you said, I could have bought anything I wanted from the whole of the internet."  
  
Still, it had been the heiress's. The scent upscale but trendy.   
  
  
"I wouldn't be as presumptuous as to assume you bought something just to throw me off," he says. This is, of course, another goading comment. Something to test her, to see what her reaction would be. Would she do that? Of course she would. _Did_ she? Well, that is the question.  
  
He traces a hand down the side of her arm, examining the material where his fingers touch. Little things, things he missed. There must be more there. How _does_ she hide it so well? And would he really want her to be so transparent?   
  
  
She wonders idly if he realizes just how the light, examining touch affects her, and immediately dismisses the idea that it's accidental. The results are obvious, must be obvious to him, the heightened blood flow, the way her skin prickles under the light touch, the change in breathing that she immediately tries to control.  
  
They are too deliberate for things like that to be accidental.  
  
"Oh? Experimental evidence would suggest you are exactly that presumptuous," she answers, tracing along the lines of the bandage still covering his shoulder beneath the shirt.   
  
  
And she diverts, her attention moved to him and away from the question. Change in breathing, minor, but noticeable. His lip twitches a little into a smile.  
  
Her hand traces along the bandage, and he turns his attention, just for a moment, to where the injury is. He had been presumptuous when he'd run out of Baker Street, presumptuous when he'd assumed John would simply run off and do something as stupid as _get married_ , and perhaps he was being presumptuous when he assumed she immediately went into misbehaving after the events on the plane. He would have, of course. Immediately delved himself into anything but focusing on her being in surgery. Was she the same?  
  
A bell rings outside of their room, somewhere near the cafeteria.  
  
"That would be dinner," he says.   
  
  
They were different in many senses, but in some they were far too alike. Which was precisely why she'd diverted, to cast doubt on whether on whether or not his assumptions were true rather than a bald denial that could be seen through.   
  
Her attention had been on her fingers running along the outline of the bandage, remembering the charts she'd skimmed, the damage found and the treatment plan. The fact that she could no longer feel heat radiating from whatever infection had set in told her almost everything she needed to know, and yet her hand lingers all the same.  
  
She looks up, at the sound of the bell, and a faint smile plays on her lips as she watches his expression, his focus seemingly on her hand against his chest.   
  
"Are you hungry?"


	11. The Betrayal of Chemistry (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In barely-there touches and unspoken words, Sherlock Holmes attempts to unravel the mystery of Irene Adler's eleven days apart from him, while she in turn attempts to unravel _him_.

"Not even remotely," he replies immediately.  
  
  
"Then why mention it at all?" she asks, withdrawing her hand.  
  
  
"You could be," he replies. She moves to withdraw her hand and he moves his up to catch her wrist.  
  
  
Her eyes positively gleam as she turns her wrist in his hand, so that his fingertips would rest against bone. "I'm not."  
  
  
Interesting. He doesn't try to move her wrist in any way. He doesn't _really_ need to take her pulse at any rate.  
  
"Good."  
  
  
Enough gives her away at this point that it is absurd to hide her pulse. But the point wasn't the information, but the fact of not giving in completely.  
  
"Do you have something in mind, Mr. Holmes? Or are you still puzzling out my shampoo?"  
  
  
"I need more data," he says. More like an admission. He should be able to piece together enough from what he has, but he _can't._ It's frustrating in a way that makes his stomach twist almost pleasantly.  
  
  
Her lips twitch, and her smile grows, even though she doesn't make a single move closer or further away. "What makes you think I'd give you any more data?"  
  
  
"What makes you think you could hide it?" he replies.  
  
He leans in again, this time tracing his nose along the side of her throat, taking in the scent she wears along with the slightly salty smell of sweat. He focuses on the mystery, because that is what he does, and she makes him want to _not_ focus, because that is what she does.  
  
He speaks again, lower and less confident. "If I told you that I'm pleased you came here with me, would that mean anything?"  
  
  
She is silent, forcing herself to hold still as she feels his breath against her throat, to not lean into the now-familiar warmth. Still, the question, quiet and with less of his usual brash confidence, brings her up short. There is only one real answer to the question, and she doubts she can hide it, not with how close he is. She brings up the hand that isn't caught by his, and rests a light fingertip at the hollow of his throat, at the same spot his breath lingers near hers.  
  
Her answer is barely audible. "Yes."  
  
  
 _Yes._  
  
He has some idea of what it might mean, and part of him would love to have a miniature pocket-sized John Watson at this moment to explain if his ideas are right. When it comes to simple deductions, even complicated puzzles, he's very good. When it comes to the meanings of emotions? He's lost.  
  
He swallows and feels, oddly enough, _vulnerable_. It reminds him of the sensation he felt back in Las Vegas, in the hotel room where they---for lack of a better term--- _made love_. When emotion truly came into play.  
  
"What," he asks, slowly, deliberately, "Does it mean, to you?"  
  
Besides what he already knows: She has, once again, beat him. Defeated him in his own headspace. Damn Woman  
  
  
 _What does it mean to you?_  
  
It means despite misbehaviour, despite disappearing and being self-indulgent and reveling in what it meant to be Irene Adler again, that despite all that he was still firmly under her skin, that whatever they were, whatever the game they played was, still irritatingly, deliciously, intoxicatingly the one thing that drew her back.  
  
And the knowledge of it, breathed in one short word, one barely there syllable, hangs inescapable in the air.  
  
She shakes her head slowly, and offers him a question in return, "Did it mean anything, that you knew I'd stayed at the hospital?"  
  
  
He moves his head back, to look down at her.  
  
He wants to say that no, of course it didn't. His health had absolutely no bearing on whether or not she was _there_ , watching over him or not. In fact, he was somewhat relieved to have time to himself when she wasn't there. And yet---and yet the fact that she _had_ stayed did please him. It pleased him, despite the complete lack of necessity for it. Or, perhaps, because of the lack of necessity. She stayed simply because she wanted to.  
  
He opens his mouth slightly, perhaps to say 'yes' or perhaps to lie, but neither comes out. Admission, he fears, will give away too much. Action, similarly, would also give away more than enough, but her fingertips are on his throat and she must see his eyes. Chemistry betrays all.  
  
He leans down and presses his mouth to hers.  
  
  
Everything gives them away. Gives them away and hides them from each other all at once. She could tell his answer before his lips met hers, had suspected it from his question, but the touch in all its silent intimacy is irrefutable truth of a kind they rarely ripped from each other, and even more rarely offered.  
  
She can taste the trace of sea salt and sweat on his lips, along with the now-familiar acrid bite of cigarette smoke, and kisses him back, for the moment all slow warmth and soft lips as the fingers at his throat traced along his collar to rest at the back of his neck.  
  
  
She has such a dangerous advantage over him. That she can invoke this sort of a reaction simply by _existing_ in the same room as him is absurd. Particularly considering he was not even conscious throughout most of it. It would, in many ways, be far better if she would simply leave. He would be free of her, free of the grip she holds over him.  
  
But then she kisses him back. He likens the sudden feeling in his chest to when he might drink water or eat for the first time after a multi-day unintentional fast. The Woman is, however, not food. He does not _need_ her. Yet, regaining contact causes similar pain. What will it be like when he returns to London and she to---wherever it is she goes?  
  
He slides the hand of his good arm from her wrist down to her waist, pulling her closer.  
  
  
She tells herself this is no different from the first words they exchanged in the Nassau airport, from the first words they'd exchanged in Montenegro that had become this, whatever this convoluted web was that tied them together. She tells herself that this is no different, that there is no quickening of her pulse, that she doesn't in fact lean into him as his arm pulls her closer, that her fingers don't tighten on the back of his neck to pull him to her.  
  
It's all a lie, of course. That in fact this was nothing like those moments and yet everything like them, words writ to action.  
  
She deepens the kiss, and there is a sense of exploration in it, as if she wants to be certain nothing has changed, that they are, at least physically, as they have always been.  
  
  
It's downright embarrassing how much he finds he wants her right now. Not merely for her familiarity. No, she brings reminder of how things were, but she's---so much more interesting than even plucking the strands of Moriarty's web. She challenges him.  
  
And then there's the sentiment. No other word for it, of course. What else could describe him wanting her to be there when he was unconscious, or her wanting him to be pleased about her presence? And yet they still hold their secrets. If this were a courtship, which it is not, it would be quite the odd dance.  
  
She explores him in their kiss, he moves them forward, taking a step towards the wall, with his arm still around her.  
  
  
He tastes of ash and salt, of tobacco and painkillers, of airplane ginger ale and spice from a half-hearted bite of meat pastry hours ago. But if she were feeling more overwrought, more egregiously poetic, she might have thought she tasted mystery on his tongue, that his mouth on hers tastes of intrigue and challenge, of dominance and submission, and of chess and London.  
  
But her poetry was in touch and in pain, in knowledge and information, and she simply remembers the combination as uniquely Sherlock Holmes.  
  
He steps forward, and the motion presses the lean planes of his body against hers, warm and familiar, and for once she steps with him, taking a step back to his step forward, and the wall is suddenly at her back, faintly warm from the heat of the sun outside.  
  
She doesn't bother breaking the kiss, simply murmuring against his lips, "Let's have dinner."  
  
  
"Thought you weren't hungry," he replies.  
  
No, theirs is not a standard romance, if even if could be called that. He tastes the waxy lipstick on her lips and tastes the stale cigarette from back in Nassau. Other than that, she has expertly cleared herself of where she has been and what she has done.  
  
Time to remove a few layers, see what he's missing.  
  
His hands go back to the zip on her top, to remove some of the carefully placed garments. At the same time, he moves his lips down to her jaw, to taste her skin. That is, admittedly, entirely him wanting to taste her skin and has very little to do with the investigation itself.  
  
  
His lips trail along her jaw, and Irene arches into the touch. The fact that the motion gives him better access to the zipper along the back of the Parisienne's light sundress may or may not have factored into the move, but it is enough, she thinks, to be leaning into the touch of his lips against her skin.  
  
She laughs, though it is more of a low, pleased sigh, in response, as one hand tangles in his hair and her fingers hook into his trousers' belt loops.  
  
"I'm not."  
  
  
"Good."  
  
Because, at this exact moment, food is the very last thing on his mind. The web that they're equal parts maneuvering in and avoiding sits somewhere in the back of his brain, as well as the things that must happen here, but they're still _secondary_. He's focused very much on how she feels against him, and that unusual sense of _hunger_ he has for her.  
  
He unzips the sundress and sides his hand in, tracing it across the skin of her back. Sticky, hot atmosphere with sharp, cold air conditioning blasting from the small unit, and the Woman's skin is somewhere between that.  
  
  
There is something very much unlike their usual combativeness in this. It reminds her, strangely, of Las Vegas, of weary emotion and desperate connectivity, but with a certain deliberateness, as if eleven days had been more, as if they haven't already immediately tried to deduce everything that had happened to each other.  
  
It should be a warning, that she risks losing again, but the room's conditioned air is cool on her suddenly bared back, and his long slender fingers are warm in contrast against her skin and its prickle of gooseflesh. There are better things, for the moment, to think about, like the fact that he was clearly far too focused on his exploration, with lips and fingertips against her throat and back.  
  
She pulls away from the touch of his lips to return the favour, tracing her own path along his jaw, tasting sweat and sea salt against her tongue.  
  
  
He lets out a short breath, the sensation of her warm mouth across his jaw far from unpleasant. In fact, his mind briefly reminds himself that he did not throw away the condoms in his bag, he simply hadn't had the time to. Convenient, surely.  
  
He looks down, noticing a small, red mark on her neck, just behind the ear. A love bite.  
  
"Heiress," he notes, quietly, his voice breathy with the stimulation on his neck. "Argentinean. Fairly obsessed with her own beauty, though not quite the type to get cosmetic surgery this early in life."  
  
  
She straightens at his observation and leans back against the wall, her eyes bright. There is a faint smudge of lipstick at the corner of her bottom lip that she does not notice, and the motion allows her hair to fall back over the telltale mark.  
  
Still, she doesn't pull away completely, her fingers are still hooked in his trouser belt loops, and she makes no move to actually step away. The hand tangled in his hair loosens, and she trails a fingertip along his jaw, tracing the same line her lips had followed just moments before.  
  
"At least half of that was a guess," she says, her own voice breathless and throaty despite her seeming confidence and challenge. "Even you couldn't have gotten _all_ that with just one look, Mr. Holmes."  
  
  
"Shape of the mark," he says, moving his hand to trace up to where the mark is. "The shape of it, the density. Someone with large lips, but not surgically enlargened lips. Someone young enough to either not realize she was leaving a little mark, or young enough not to care."  
  
He lowers his hand down, stopping it at her waist.  
  
"The second is your shoes," he says. "Agostini. Argentine designer. Could've been a purchase online, but they're the slightest bit too big for you. I'd say they were pinched."  
  
  
Her smile deepens at the touch of his fingers against her neck, and her own fingers graze the collar of his shirt. "So half. the 'obsessed with her own beauty' part was a guess," she all but purrs, pulling him to her by his trousers. Her eyes gleam, but her pupils are dilated as she continues, "And you're wrong about nicking the shoes."  
  
  
"Hardly a guess," he says, though, in reality, it was more of a guess. She pulls him closer and he doesn't resist. Her eyes are dark, and he is always so fascinated by her arousal. She never finds the things that others find attractive arousing. She finds the puzzle, she finds the games they play attractive. He imagines that were he to travel the entire planet through this quest of his, he will never find another person quite like her.  
  
"Wealthy then," he says. "To give you her four-thousand dollar shoes."  
  
  
The game is, after all, what sets him, sets _them_ apart from the dull, ordinary people and their too obvious desires. That, and the potential for losing, made the game irresistible, even as the puzzle of _him_ , of them, of whatever they were becoming, became ever more complex and dangerous in its own way.  
  
"Wealthy and careless, or wealthy and smitten?" she asks, amusement and challenge curling through her voice like opium smoke.  
  
  
"Knowing you," he says. "I'd say both. You're not careless enough to pick someone too clever to exploit."  
  
There is absolutely no malice in his words. There's even a slight tone of appreciation, even. She does know how to work her abilities to her own advantage.  
  
He moves his hand back up now, to where he's unzipped the sundress so he can slowly lower it down her shoulders. He had her memorized from the first time she stood in front of him, utterly nude. It's still an incredible high to undress her or to watch her undress herself. That word she used. Smitten. Yes, that's a good word for it.  
  
  
She watches him closely, her eyes never leaving his face even as she feels his fingers run up her arms, as he slowly eases the dress past her shoulders. Nothing has changed in eleven days, she reminds herself, no matter how she'd kissed him, no matter how they were here, or the fact that she still hasn't let go of him.  
  
Nothing has changed, but yet here they are, driven by seemingly nothing but quiet words and unspoken sentiment. She lets go of him just long enough to free the dress from her arms, the rest of it at her hips and the dark lace of her bra stark against pale skin. She slips her fingers through his hair again.  
  
"Mm, I'm flattered."  
  
  
"Don't be," he replies automatically. It is automatic, because he _is_ flattering her. She has been idiotic enough to toy with someone smarter than herself, and she very nearly won, too. And, he has no doubt, she'll do it again. He doesn't doubt that she's the sort who is willing to get burned almost immediately after she's licked her first set of wounds clean.  
  
She _misbehaves_. That is even more attractive to him than the lacy brassiere against her breasts. Objectively, she is attractive and he is definitely _attracted_ , however a body is really just a body and can be analyzed and taken apart with relative ease. It's that mind of hers, the way she operates and the way she pulls things apart that draws him in.  
  
He wonders, as he leans forward to press his lips to her collarbone and down to the edge of the lacy bra, if there's something wrong with them. Just as he and his brother do not feel sentiment in the way that ordinary people do, he and the Woman do not feel attraction in an ordinary manner, either. She is attracted to him, yes, but it's not until he begins to analyze her that her eyes go dark with pleasure. He is attracted to her, but seeing her schemes and plans in his analysis is what reorders his blood flow to more sexually useful areas.  
  
  
She laughs at his reflexive answer, because he _is_ flattering and it _is_ reflexive and the script stays the the same, their words stay the same even as settings and the physical change. _They_ stay the same. Even with how obvious sentiment has become, they are still uniquely extraordinarily themselves, finding attraction in things the rest of the world wouldn't.  
  
The laugh fades into a purr of pleasure as his mouth traces its path down from her collarbone, and Irene arches against him, all soft curves and warm flesh and the promise of delicious friction laid over a will of iron. "And since when have I ever done exactly what you suggested?  
  
  
It's going to be more difficult to undo her brassiere than he wants to admit. He can, in theory, lift his other arm to help, but the last thing he wants is for a spike of pain to break this. The bubble of attraction with them is resilient enough to have held up throughout their travels, but sometimes he feels it's as fragile as sugar glass.  
  
He reaches up his good arm and attempts to undo the bra. When he finds himself unsuccessful, he lowers his hand down her back to slip the dress over his hips, with the quickness of someone not trying to admit they couldn't do something---no, no, of course he just meant to lower the dress.  
  
  
She notices the way he reaches for the clasp at her back, then slides his hand back down to ease the rest of the dress over her hips. Her eyes flicker momentarily to his injured shoulder, then a slow, predatory smile touched with anticipation curves over her lips. Her touch is careful as she runs one hand up his chest, ghosting over his injured shoulder without actually putting pressure on the area, then back down slowly, undoing a button of his shirt at a time.  
  
She leans towards him again, her lips tracing the curve of his jaw, feeling the beginning of an edge of stubble against her mouth. Her breath is warm as she speaks against his ear, her tongue tracing the outer curve, "I could make you try to unhook me with your teeth, you know. But I doubt it would survive the experience."  
  
He has, after all, demonstrated a particularly destructive impatience with her clothes on more than one occasion.  
  
  
He finds the edge of a smirk touching his lips at her words as he remembers his impatience with her clothing in the past. His own is relatively simple: Buttons, zippers. Things that are meant to hold clothing together. Clasps and the like remind him of cufflinks; that is, they are unnecessary.  
  
He thinks he should inform her that her clothing is too complicated. Or perhaps to tell her that her gentle avoidance of his shoulder is far more thrilling than it probably should be. Or perhaps to tell her that she should unhook herself before he attempts again. Instead:  
  
"And how, precisely, would you _make_ me?" he asks.


	12. The Lovers (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One gunshot wound, eleven days, and three disguises later, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler appear to finally be able to admit to their own sentiment. But will the moment last, or will pride win out?

This is how she likes them best, she realizes. Not in desperate connectivity or brimming anger, those were times too out of control, too vulnerable. But full of challenge and puzzles and their mutual desire, both to win and otherwise.   
  
She smirks and pulls away enough to see him, to watch his expression and let him see her own self-satisfied smirk. "Now you know it can be done. And that I don't think you can."   
  
  
He narrows his eyes. She knows him far too well for his own good. He doesn't think it can be done. Though, logically, the hook and clasp could be pulled apart with fingers, it could be pulled apart with teeth. He thinks that maybe he could turn her around and press his mouth against her back, cause her to arch and maybe---  
  
"Oh, you're good," he says, leaning down to catch her mouth with his.   
  
  
She thinks she can almost see his mind work, can see him run through the possibilities and the recognition of what she's done. She would laugh, but he presses his mouth against hers and then there are far more interesting things to do than indulge in self-satisfied laughter.  
  
She deepens the kiss, methodically teasing and tasting him as her fingers twist and tighten in the fabric of his now-unbuttoned shirt. Her other hand slides to the back of his head, keeping him close even as she breaks the kiss long enough to answer, her voice breathless.  
  
"You're not so bad."   
  
  
This close, he brushes her nose with his, then lets his mouth ghost over hers.  
  
"Teeth," he murmurs, part of his brain still trying to work out how one would accomplish that feat, especially considering she's said it most certainly _can_ be done.  
  
He wraps his good arm around her waist and takes a step backwards, towards the bed, keeping her close.   
  
  
He takes a step back, towards the bed, and she moves with him. She would have, regardless of whether or not his arm was around her waist, because they do this to each other, draw each other together magnetically. Though her step is more cautious, aware of the room, of his injured shoulder.  
  
His breath is warm against her lips, and her darkened eyes positively gleam at his response. "Teeth and one hand," she amends. "Since it's your first time trying."   
  
  
"Wouldn't be proof that it can be done with teeth only," he replies. He likes the way she looks at him when she looks like this. He imagines that one day he will wish he could delete the way she looks when she's like this, but he won't be able to. She's entwined herself too far into his brain, he can't even delete his own internal awkwardness at their first meeting, her straddling him nude while he tried to think of something clever to say.  
  
He presses his mouth to her chin, and then to her jaw, remembering the places that invoked good responses in the past from her. Once they part, he thinks, the knowledge of where sexually one enjoys being touched will be good information. Useful. That way, he can convince himself that he was involved in a rather lengthy experiment, rather than simply admitting he was with her because he didn't want to be anywhere else.   
  
  
His mouth is trailing along her jaw, tracing a line along sensitive nerves and receptive skin, and her breath hitches as he lingers at particularly effective points: the spot right behind her ear, where the little heiress had been; the pulse point at her throat; the curve where neck and shoulder met, among others.  
  
The last earns him a low, pleased purr, and her voice is quiet and throaty as she answers, her fingers at the back of his head curling into his hair.   
  
"If you insist on getting it right the first time." Her grip on his hair tightens, a steady, almost warning, tug, and there is a teasing laugh in her voice. "I do like seeing you frustrated."   
  
  
"I'd noticed," he replies, smirking against her skin. She tugs against his hair and that sharp pain feels good. She likes the little pains, the small but sharp ones, like the spikes in the handcuffs. Most people, he imagines, don't begin their sexually active life with sharp pains thrown in. But then again, most people aren't Sherlock Holmes, and he really doubts others would be even remotely stimulating to him.  
  
"The real question is appeal," he says, nipping at the curve where neck and shoulder meet. "Is it really all that _impressive_ , or is it the submission you prefer?"   
  
  
For anyone else, she imagines, the time for talk would have ended at the point where her dress had ended up in a puddle on the ground steps behind where they are now. That by now there would be more interest in heat and skin and friction than talk.  
  
But, as they have proven again and again, they are hardly anyone else. Which is why the question is asked, why it is interesting, and why she pulls him away from the curve of her shoulder to press her mouth to his as her hand reaches into his open shirt, her fingernails tracing down now-familiar paths, patterns along nerves and musculature that she knows will draw a reaction, though her fingers continue to avoid the injury in his shoulder.  
  
She catches his bottom lip with her teeth, tugging lightly, before answering. "Anyone can learn to submit, but they can't manage it and be impressive at the same time."   
  
  
He lets out a gasp against her mouth as her nails trace his abdomen, across sensitive nerves and still-healing scars. He doubts he's submitted to the hospital bed as often as he has with her, and that is quite the feat, in his mind. He shrugs his good shoulder a bit to push the open shirt away from his shoulders, to assist with the undressing in as passive a manner as is possible. He'd much rather focus on her, and have her focused on him. It's quite a selfish thing, coupling.  
  
"I won't submit," he says, his voice low. The "again" is silent, as he has submitted before, begged before. Hardly as traumatic an experience as he'd imagined it would be.   
  
  
She takes a moment away from running her hand along his torso to pull his shirt away from his injured shoulder, fingertips brushing lightly against the injury when she cannot avoid it, and presses her mouth against his throat, sucking at the pulse point just below his skin.  
  
His heartbeat pulses against her lip, and she smiles against his skin at his words. "That sounds like a challenge, Mr. Holmes."   
  
  
"Was it?" he replies, his breath catching at the sensation of her mouth against his pulse. "Because I thought it was more of a statement.”  
  
She brushes his injury, but it's hardly enough to pull him from her embrace. He slides his free hand down her side, stopping to trace his thumb along her hipbone. They're both recovering now, and she's been too underfed on their last days out. He's hardly one to talk, but---he feels concern for her.  
  
He takes a step back from her, then, and circles around her, looking down at the clasp on her brassiere, considering how exactly one would manage it with their teeth. He steps towards her again, pushing her hair away from the back of her neck and pressing his mouth there.   
  
  
The warmth of his hand lingers against her hip even as he steps away, circling her with a considering look. She refuses to watch him, instead smirking slowly, as if she knows exactly what he is trying to do.  
  
He steps close, and she can feel the heat radiating from him a moment before his hand brushes her hair away from the back of her neck. She's convinced herself not to lean into the touch, but then his mouth is warm and wet against the back of her neck and she sighs, her earlier conviction forgotten as she leans ever so slightly backwards.  
  
Her hand snakes back to wrap around his waist, and even as she leans into him, Irene manages to murmur, "One could argue by trying, you're already submitting."   
  
  
"One could," he agrees. He doesn't consider himself submissive, and doesn't believe that.   
  
He presses his mouth a little lower, this time between her shoulder blades, and then lower. He moves his uninjured hand to her waist, as if to prove he's not using the advantage she offered him. He supposes with a twist of his head, he could manage to undo the bra clasp, though he's not about to wrestle with the garment like a dog. A twist with the lower jaw might make it possible.  
  
He turns his head to the side, grips the material next to the clasp with his teeth, and pulls it to the side. The alternate side of the brassiere strap moves as well, so he pushes his tongue out to hold that in place, and the clasps move easily, undone in a matter of seconds. It's only after this that he realizes she did manage to make him attempt this, but he can't properly care, because it _was_ solved.  
  
He presses his mouth to the exposed skin of her back. "It can be done, then."   
  
  
The touch of his mouth against her back, and the hand at her waist, are distracting enough that for a moment Irene doesn't notice that his attention has shifted from warm skin to the clasp, and by the time she notices, he's already attempted once. She almost says something, but by the time she's thought of what, he's managed it, and all she can do is laugh, a low purr of approval that seems to settle just under her skin.  
  
She arches back into the touch of his lips against her bare back, and her hand rests against his hand at her waist, her fingers twining with his.   
  
"I'm impressed."   
  
  
"Hardly difficult," he murmurs against her skin. He likes the sensation of her fingers against his, he decides. The simplistic intimacy of it. Not for all of the time, they rarely entwine anywhere without some sort of purpose behind it. But here, right now, it's good. It's _right_.  
  
The brassiere out of the way of her back, he traces his lips across more skin, across her shoulder blade and then down to her ribcage. He has memorized the look of her back but has not spent enough time with it, he decides. He moves his mouth up again, to her shoulder.  
  
"Though I doubt that was a submissive act. Hardly begging."   
  
  
He is _extremely_ distracting in the way his mouth is tracing its way across her back, she decides. It makes her want to lean back, to simply _revel_ in the feel of his lips against her skin,and it is such an ordinary desire, so very much unlike their pull and push.  
  
"Begging isn't the only way of submitting, you realize," she murmurs, the hand not twined with his reaching back to slide into his hair.   
  
She is, after all, considering at least one of them at the moment.   
  
  
"Is it not? I imagine you might have handcuffs in your luggage, but they might not be necessary."  
  
Her hand slides into his hair, and he moves his lips upwards, touching that curve where her neck meets her shoulder again, and then moving it along the pulse of her neck. He moves his lower body towards her as well, the friction of his erection against her not nearly as distracting as her fingernails against his scalp.  
  
There's something terribly _visceral_ in how she reacts to him. She manages to pull him apart from the inside out.  
  
"After we part, I don't think I will want another lover," he finds himself saying aloud against her throat. "I doubt _this_ could be replicated again." A pause. "Though lover is really an incorrect term for us, I suppose."   
  
  
She could tell him that submission was far more than begging and handcuffs and suspension bondage and whips. She could tell him that submission was in the mind more than the body, that she found her pleasure in making the mind behind the body beg. She could, but he is speaking and there is something in his tone that catches her attention as much as his lips against her throat.  
  
His words crystallize knowledge she's carried in the back of her mind for weeks, and by crystallizing it, he makes it inescapable, that this cocoon of desire, this holiday from death, this escape from what they pretended to be as opposed to what they are, will end. But that too, that they have left their marks on each other, etched flesh and bone deep, stitched into every part of their minds.   
  
"No, lovers are simple," she answers, her voice barely louder than the sigh of pleasure he manages to coax from her, and her fingers tangled with his tighten. "And that would imply this was love."   
  
  
Part of him wants very much to end this now, here. Because later it may turn sour or make them bitter and regretful. That is how many relationships end, he's seen. It becomes motive for the crimes he follows, it becomes a reason to hurt the other person. They don't need reason to hurt each other, but---but he doesn't want to regret. He felt it once, her phone in his pocket as he played the piece he wrote for her while he was certain she was dead.  
  
"The chemistry of love and attraction are simple," he says, his pulse quickening as her fingers tighten with his. "This is far from simple, Woman."  
  
 _The_ Woman. The representative of the whole of her sex, in his mind. The only woman who matters. That isn't love, he thinks. It's _understanding_. She is that way and he sees it.   
  
  
She presses back into him, her bare back against his bare front, their skin heated in the middle of the air conditioned room. She could feel his arousal pressed against her and she shifts to brush her hip against it. But even then, it is secondary. She is far more aware of the way their fingers are twined, the way his breath skitters across her bare skin. The words that are at once painfully obvious that they continue to dance around.  
  
 _This is far from simple._  
  
She tilts her head to catch his earlobe between her teeth. "And we both know how much you like being the exception to the rule."   
  
  
"And you being the one who predominates the whole of her sex," he replies. Predominates is an excellent word for it, he thinks. The one who is the strongest and main element of being a Woman, and the one who exerted the control. She knew very well how to do both.  
  
He lets his eyes shut at the sensation of her mouth against his earlobe and her hip against his arousal.  
  
He wants to say more, but he also doesn't want to reveal his sudden loss of breath at the sensation. It is a game, and always will be.   
  
  
She hums with approval at his answer, her breath warm as her tongue traces the outer curve of his ear. Yes, they were both the exception to the rule, and he was the only one with whom she would play this game, the only one with whom sex threatened to be intimacy, the only one with whom the physical attraction was an expression of the mental.  
  
She twists in their mutual embrace, turning to face him as her hand tightened in his hair to bare his throat to her lips.   
  
  
She turns to face him and he wants to lean down, to press his mouth to hers again, but her hand grips in his hair and he lets his head fall back with the grip, letting out a low hiss at the pain the grip causes. Pain and pleasure. She brings both in excess.  
  
He keeps his hand in hers, but raises the hand of his injured arm up to her waist, to pull her warm body closer to his. He refuses to give in to the handicap, refuses to let her win, even as he submits to her.   
  
  
The warmth of his hand on her waist, the knowledge that it was his injured arm, is not lost on Irene as she traces a line down his throat, occasionally interspersing the bite of teeth with warm lips. She steps closer to him, her body molding against his as she guides them another step closer to one of the beds. Conceding, even as she gets what she wants.  
  
She is reminded, again, of how they _fit_ , of how despite everything, despite Kotor and Las Vegas and Hong Kong and London, they are still _here_ and how they draw each other even as they draw blood. And a wild thought occurs to her, one that she had already dismissed, but that returns suddenly, and she pulls away from the taste of his skin on her tongue to crush his mouth to hers, as if to drown out the rogue idiot idea.   
  
  
He finds a smile touching his lips as he feels her teeth against his throat. She wins and she gives in. He wins and he gives in. He's reminded once again that it's really for the best that this _isn't_ love. It would be far more boring that way. This push, this pull, this tug on each other's hearts, that's far more what they need. Or, perhaps, it's what he needs. He has long since decided that predicting the Woman would be a waste of his time.  
  
She crushes her mouth to his, and he returns the kiss just as desperately. There is a point in which _want_ becomes _need_ , and the whole of San Salvador island could collapse into the Atlantic for all he cares right now. He needs her.   
  
As he turns them so he can move to sit back onto the bed with her atop him, he can only think that he hopes she doesn't ask him to beg. He can't stand another blow to his ego, as he will immediately beg in response.   
  
  
He turns them around and she lets him, because she wants this more than to fight, because she needs this, needs _him_ , at this moment more than she needs to win.  
  
Perhaps she's needed this since she'd stepped foot onto the airport tarmac in Nassau the second time. Or, maybe, ever since the gunshot in London.  
  
But that was a precision she didn't care to examine, to determine at the moment as she moves with him, straddling him as he sinks onto the bed. The motion causes one strap of her unhooked bra to fall down her shoulder, dark elastic and loose red curls against pale skin.  
  
She kisses him again, and it is with a fierce want, a driving _need_ , as if she wants to draw the very breath from his lungs, as if she wants to draw the very essence of him into herself.   
  
  
He pulls her into him as much with this kiss, raising his bad arm up to slide the strap of her brassiere down her pale shoulder. It's always strange for him to think of how short a time it has been since they've reacquainted. Weeks, really. It feels as though it has been so, so much longer. But then again, when Mycroft had told him that he'd barely even known her that fateful Christmas, he couldn't properly believe that it had only been three months of texting.  
  
No, he would not call this love, but he would consider it an excellent, all-consuming infatuation. A diversion of dangerous proportions.  
  
When he breaks the kiss, he leans upwards to press his mouth to where one of the red curls brushes her shoulder.   
  
  
He raises his hand to slide the elastic from her shoulder, and in response she untangles her hand from his hair, trailing her fingertips along the curve of his neck, tracing along the line of his collarbone. She doesn't press, but her hand is warm, barely touching him as she reaches the bandaged injury at his shoulder.   
  
"Do I need to restrain you to keep from hurting yourself?" Her words are teasing, touched with her usual arch amusement. Or they would have, if her breath hadn't hitched at the touch of his lips against her shoulder.   
  
  
"I certainly hope you won't," he replies, his own voice low. "I'm already held down enough as it is."  
  
He looks down her sides, as if to indicate the Woman herself, pinning him willingly by her hips to the bed. He returns attention to her shoulder, and then down to where he's unhooked that shoulder strap, his mouth finding exposed skin. Her reactions in this case are the primary key, and he's going to focus on that.   
  
  
Her breath hitches again as his mouth returns to exploring bare skin, and for a moment she thinks he has gotten far too good at that exploration, at drawing breathless gasps and pleased hums and pleasured sighs out of her as if he is playing an instrument. The thought is gone quickly, though, as she continues running her hand down his arm, and then along his chest, her nails dragging along in deliberate trails along where she knows receptive nerves lay just below the surface.  
  
She shifts her hips against him. "Not enough," she manages to answer. "Though you seem to be enjoying it."   
  
  
Her nails draw along his skin, and he lets out another gasp against her skin. Especially the area around his injury, the blood seems to be right near the top of the skin, and all of his nerves seem to sing with her touch. She shifts against him, and he finds his hips involuntarily rise to meet her.  
  
"Yes," he admits, tracing his tongue along the edge of her nipple. "But you've always known what I like."  
  
Even when he absolutely did not.   
  
  
His hips move against hers in counterpoint to the warmth of his tongue and the touch of cool air against her breast. And suddenly every nerve in her body seemed to spark at the combination, clenching in slow aching want as she gasps wordlessly against him, her fingers tightening on his even as she arched into the touch.  
  
Her body begs, but she refuses, the hand that had been trailing sharp touch along his body tightening, gripping his side. "And you're starting to return the favour," she tries to answer, though to her ears Irene thought she sounded far too breathless.  
  
But that was a lie. Even in her house, shocked and befuddled, he had dangled precisely the thing to catch her interest, the challenge of figuring out how his mind worked through the puzzle of the hiker.   
  
  
With the Woman, he can see the appeal of sex. Not just the physical release, which is very good, of course, but the puzzle of where to go and what to touch to invoke a reaction. Hardly as simple as an a + b = reaction sequence, mind. No, the Woman's body is far more delicate and intricate than that. It's more like a complicated Rubik’s cube, where he has to make certain that all of the corners are aligned properly for her to slide into pleasure.  
  
Their hands are still connected, fingers twined together, and despite how much he wants to focus with his good hand, to find other places to touch, he doesn't want to disconnect that. Not yet. It feels like he would break something important.  
  
So,he moves the hand of his injured arm. In this position, the motion does cause a sharp twinge of pain up his side, but not enough to stop. He moves his hand to the space where their hips meet, to touch the last of her garments.   
  
  
His hand is warm against her hip, and she thinks she can feel exactly where his fingers rest against the edges of lace and silk, but he is distracting and drawing physical desire from her like notes from a violin and the exact position of where his hand rests is for the moment a less pressing matter than where his tongue is moving and the way his breath skitters across her skin.  
  
Her fingernails dig into his side as she tries to keep from making a sound that could be interpreted as pleading, and her hips move against his, urging. There isn't enough touch, and the hand tangled with his loosens its grip, and her thumb brushes against the inside of his wrist.   
  
  
The motion of her hips is all of the urging he needs. He traces his fingertips along the outside of her knickers, then slides his fingers up, to move the garment out of the way. He traces across her with his fingertips, repeating the motion whenever he gets the reaction he wants from her.  
  
Her hand turns, and his follows, curling his fingers around her pulse. He wonders if this is what normal couples would call an affectionate touch, like a public kiss or simply holding hands. To them, it's sharing of the pulse, sharing of the intimate secrets of how fast their heart is beating.   
  
  
If the knowledge of a pulse is their acknowledgment of sentiment, how vicious was whatever they found themselves caught in that it was also their weapon against each other, the chemical betrayal of bodies over minds.  
  
But then perhaps it was simply fitting, simply _them_ on every level.  
  
His heartbeat races against her fingertips, as she'd known it must, as she knows hers is beneath his. But then his fingers slip past her knickers and his careful, deliberate touches suddenly threaten to undo her, to tear away the reminders of untouchable Irene Adler that her disappearance, her liaison with the heiress had tried to rebuild.  
  
The reminder that _this_ was the game far worth playing, the meeting of equal minds and bodies. The reminder that the threat of losing it _hurt_ , and that a simple holiday, a simple temporary escape, from death should not be so complicated, that _alone protected her_.  
  
Every nerve in her body, every muscle, every fiber of her being wanted more, and the plea for release came easily, sat ready to fall from her lips as her hips rocked against his, but the mind refused, _she_ refused to give in despite the liquid heat that coiled at the base of her spine.  
  
And so she reached for the one thing that should give him pause, that should fracture, if not shatter, the cocoon of desire that they had wrapped themselves in.  
  
Her voice was breathless, but she forced the words out anyway even as her body moved against his hand. "I will meet Moran on this island. This doesn't change anything."


	13. The Battle (Rated E)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even in the midst of vulnerability, there are certain things, like pride and secrets, that come between Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes.

Her hips rock against his, and he knows she must be close to climax. Her hair is wild, loose curls across her shoulder, and her skin is pale in the dark room and she is _exquisite_. She truly is. His heart is racing in his chest the way hers is against his fingertips and he---he feels something tighten in his chest, like he wants to tell her something. Something important about his heart and her.  
  
He opens his mouth to say it, but her words come out first. Moran, on the island. Doesn't change anything.  
  
Except it does. It means the bubble of---of---of whatever emotion he was allowing himself to feel is gone. She didn't come to San Salvador to find Sherlock, she came to work on her acquisition of Jim Moriarty's web. It feels like betrayal, but he knows it isn't. She never specifically told him she'd come for him; he'd assumed. Perhaps because that's how he wanted it to be. The signs that she was here for Moran appear in the back of his mind. Her insistence over her mobile phone, curiosity to when they'd leave and where, and then the question of the web---but he'd been too _pleased to see her_ to notice. How _obtuse_ of him.  
  
He stops in the motion of his fingertips for less than a second's hesitation before resuming, fingers moving just the slightest bit faster, harder. It changes nothing, he tells himself. Nothing, but the ice he feels running through his veins. He turns his pulse away from her fingertips before he can remind himself that it shows just as much weakness as the pulse itself.  
  
"You could've warned me to wear a bulletproof vest before I arrived," he says.   
  
  
The loss of his heartbeat, heated and rapid, against her fingertips is expected but that does not keep the feeling of hollowness from settling in the pit of her stomach, displacing at least some of the liquid heat. She feels a twinge of regret for its loss despite the knowledge that she'd provoked it.  
  
Still, his touch doesn't stop, in fact growing quicker, rougher, and she is almost grateful for it. It made it easier to keep from begging for release, made it easier to hold on to and draw back to herself the remnants of Irene Adler.   
  
She lets go of his wrist, and breaks his grip on hers and on the racing traitorous pulse beneath her skin. Instead she grips his uninjured shoulder, anchoring herself to physicality and cold pain rather than nebulous, dangerous sentiment and warm pleasure.   
  
"You said you didn't want to be involved in my affairs," she reminds him.   
  
  
"I should be grateful that you're willing to pull me in anyway," he replies. The gentle kiss to her shoulder turns into a small but somewhat vicious nip to her skin.  
  
"Not that I'd be one to devise something as petty as revenge," he says. This is, of course, a lie. Had he not blown up the boat in Hong Kong as an act of twisted revenge over the Woman's abduction and torture? But Moran inncapaciting him for eleven days doesn't seem worthy of something so vicious. Just...a broken jaw, maybe. Perhaps a trip to the authorities---  
  
Except that wasn't possible. Not if he wishes to keep the Woman a secret from Mycroft. His attention doesn't falter from the Woman's body, though his own sexual excitement relaxes, in favor of his brain being stimulated.   
  
  
She gasps, a sharp unexpected intake of breath, at the vicious nip at her shoulder, and her grip digs deeper into his. It was at once easier and harder to focus now, easier to focus on his words and her own response, harder to be distracted by the threat or promise of release.  
  
"You're drawing yourself in," she points out, trying to force her hips still. "And what makes you think it is _your_ revenge to devise?"   
  
  
The thought of the Woman enacting revenge sends a sudden, surprising shot of arousal down him, and where his erection had been waning with disappointment, it was once again at full attention. He imagines her manipulating the pieces, the man who shot him unable to pull them back together once he'd realized just how viciously he'd been had. She is cruel in the most delightful of ways, and Sherlock knows that the Woman could make him ache, and she'd do it so flawlessly, so perfectly.  
  
"Oh?" he asks, his voice again low. "And what, exactly, are your revenge plans against Mr. Moran?"  
  
Her hips grind against his hand, and he doesn't disappoint her, swirling out letters against her clitoris, words like _manipulate_ and _vicious_ , words that he will forever associate with the Woman straddling him.   
  
She can feel him twitch against her beneath his trousers, and that only serves to remind her how much of a disadvantage he has her at, how she is caught as his fingers trace along sensitive flesh. She almost answers him, almost tells him, but the twitch against her thigh reminds her that she is perilously close to losing, and she rakes her nails along his side, her fingers catching at the button on his waistband.  
  
Her own voice is low, edged with breathless raggedness as she leans into him, pressing her body even closer against his and her lips and teeth grazing the curve where his shoulder and neck meet.  
  
"Come with me and see for yourself."   
  
  
Her teeth graze his skin, and he hisses in pleasure. Her fingers catch on the button of his trousers, and sentiment or not, anger or not, this sort of attraction can't possibly be replicated anywhere else, he decides. He desires her utterly, she defeats all of his internal security. It's actually rather irritating, if he thinks about it. Because there's utterly nothing he can do about it.  
  
His good hand freed, he brings it up to tangle in her hair, to move her head towards his so he can brush his mouth against hers.  
  
"I still can't trust you," he says, though his voice is far from admonishing. On the contrary, it's almost a flattery.   
  
  
She gasps as his hand tangles in her hair, but it is a product of being caught more than that of pain, and in response she pulls to undo his trousers, inadvertently ripping the button from his waistband before her mouth is pressed to his.  
  
He tastes like he had before, sentiment and anger don't change that fact, and she catches his lower lip between her teeth as her fingers undo his zipper.   
  
"You trust me to be on my side," she corrects. "Is that a yes?"   
  
  
The friction of her fingertips against his zipper is enticing, but not nearly so much as the idea of seeing her in action. He knows he would've said 'yes' from the beginning no matter the consequences.  
  
He lets out a sigh at the bite on his lip. Kissing the Woman is at once sentimental and destructive, very like everything in their relationship. He wouldn't possibly ask for anything else.  
  
"Saying 'no' would mean not meeting the man who shot me," he replies, leaning up to press his mouth to the underside of her jaw. "And that is something I would not possibly miss."   
  
  
She hums with approval, a low purr from low in her throat, though whether it was from the touch of his mouth to the underside of her jaw and the line of sensitive nerves there that he seemed to enjoy following or from his answer, it was hard to say. Perhaps both.  
  
She parts the zipper and slips a hand into his trousers, cool fingertips against warm skin, even as she arched into his mouth against her jaw. "Good. I'd have hated to have to say please."   
  
  
"But would you have _really_?" he asks. He traces his tongue along the sensitive nerves, tasting the sweat on her skin. He moves his fingers against her just the slightest bit faster, demanding that reaction as well. He can understand sex as an occupational device---there's a lot of power in being in control of another person's pain and pleasure.  
  
Her hand slips into his trousers and he lets out an _Oh_ against her neck, her cool fingers touching him, exciting nerves and taking his mind far from thought.   
  
  
She is threatening to lose control again, though his answering exhale against her neck reminds her that she is not the only one. Her fingers linger against him, first a slow deliberate touch, then quicker, steadier strokes.   
  
She gasps as his fingers move along sensitive nerve bundles, and her hips move involuntarily against his hand as she answers, admission and approval in a single breathless word,  
  
" _Yes_."   
  
  
Shame he missed it, then. He wants to say that, but her hand is stroking him, and her cool, confident fingers have taken away his ability to breathe, much less speak at the moment. He mimics her movement with his own touch, locking them together in their waves of pleasure.  
  
He just has to remind himself that she's not here for him, not really. And that shouldn't hurt him, but it _does_. Just as the fact that she waited at the hospital shouldn't matter but it does.  
  
He moves his head to look up at her. "I want you," he says.   
  
  
She could have met Moran anywhere in the world, could have sent him skipping to Anchorage or Buenos Aires or Sydney with the right leverage. And a part of her recognizes that perhaps she should have, that San Salvador is too isolated, too quiet to be safe, to be a rendezvous point. But there is no where else she _could_ have gone but San Salvador, once the call had come that he'd been released from the hospital.  
  
His touch echoes her own slow, deliberate strokes and she swallows back the urge to speed up her own touches along the length of him to spur him on. Instead, she meets his eye and looks down, her hair still caught in his fingers, at the way they are entangled, and back up at him, knowing her skin is flushed with blood close to the surface, that her eyes are dilated and a thousand other tiny chemical signs have spelled out her own betrayal along every inch of her body.  
  
"I'd say you have me very well caught."   
  
  
"Yes," he replies, gasping. Yes, for the way she's touching him. Yes, for the fact that she's caught him, too.  
  
He lifts his hips at her touch and lets out another gasp. He presses his mouth to hers again and moves his body to match her movements. Her chemical betrayals just push him onwards, because whether or not she's here for him, she _is_ aroused by him. Not by a persona he's putting on, not by who she thinks he should be. But by _him_ , by Sherlock Holmes. It's something he wants to pull into himself and never delete or let go, because it has never happened in the past, and he doubts it shall ever happen again.   
  
  
She is not one to admit a disadvantage, and by her answer she _has_ admitted a disadvantage, but there was no denying that his answer sends another jolt of desire down her spine, that she very nearly moans against his mouth on hers. She shifts her weight to her legs against the bed, moving so that there is more space between them to ease him out of his trousers even though it is a break in contact, seconds ticking by with less skin pressed against hers.  
  
"And what, exactly, do you plan to do with that fact?"   
  
  
He lifts his hips to assist in the removal of his trousers. This puts some pressure on his shoulders, but he can't really care that much about it. He's certain he'll care _later_ when he's sore, but not right now. Right now there's her, and there's her question.  
  
What will he do with the fact that he has her "caught"? As if she could ever be truly caught. It would be like catching water in the palm of one's hand. It's there, yes, but it can easily slip away, just the wisp of a memory holding it in place.  
  
"Feel disappointed," he says. "That I am incapable of regretting anything."  
  
Except that's not entirely true. He does, in a way, regret. Like now, he regrets that this holiday can't last forever, and that he can't simply bring her back to London when he leaves.   
  
  
Despite their positions, despite the way they are tangled in each other, it is momentarily easier to breath when she has to focus on easing clothes away. Easier to breathe, easier to focus on something other than the counterpoint of her touch to his, even if every inch of skin is protesting even a second without touch.   
  
Once his trousers are away from his hips, she leans in again, crushing her mouth to his as she resumes stroking the entire length of him. "Is this something to regret?"   
  
  
She kisses him and resumes stroking him, and he's temporarily lost in sensation. The sensation of her hand around him, of her mouth on his, and the way she feels under his fingertips.  
  
"No," he says. "Not for me."  
  
He thinks of the rubbers he has in his bag, but decides that he can mention them later, this is really far too important now. (This, he considers, is probably how "accidents" like the ones on crap television shows happen.)   
  
  
The only think keeping her from falling over the edge completely is the want, no the _need_ , to bring him with her, to drive him to the same precipice, the same edge of pleasure and near madness that he pulls her to. She quickens her pace, long slim fingers wrapping around him, tracing along a vein that ran the length of him.   
  
"For once, Mr. Holmes, I think we're in complete agreement."   
  
  
She strokes him more quickly, and he feels the pressure of orgasm start to build. This strikes him as---what's the word?--- _premature_ , and he doesn't fancy the idea of appearing gauche. Certainly not in the presence of the Woman.  
  
He opts for a simple warning. "I'm going to---"  
  
But perhaps this is part of the game. Who will break first, who will hold off orgasm while the other gives in? If it is, he finds this game deliriously unfair. His experience is significantly less than hers, and she's orgasmed in the last week, while he's been locked in a hospital bed.   
  
  
She smirks, continuing to stroke him and at the same moment shifting as if to pull away from the touch of his hand. An obvious bluff, given the way the shift doesn't actually pull her away.  
  
"That is the point, yes."   
  
  
"No," he purrs, pulling her back in with the hand in her hair. He speeds up his fingers to meet her strokes, sliding a finger within her to mix up the sensations. If he's going to go over the edge (he is), he's taking her with him.  
  
Rather like the rest of their holiday together, now that he thinks about it.  
  
He kisses her again, deeply, desperately. Something to hold onto, so he won't lose this.   
  
  
He is, unsurprisingly, an extremely quick study on how best to draw gasps of pleasure from her, but it is the act of being caught, of catching and the unshakeable knowledge that it is a completely mutual feeling, that sends her over the edge.  
  
Her body clenches around him, the strength of her orgasm seeming to have intensified for the delay, and her cry is swallowed up by his mouth against hers. Her free hand clutches at him as physical sensation washes over her and it is all she can manage to do to keep stroking him, to bring him with her down into breathless release.  
  
She will deny it to the grave that she cried out his name.   
  
  
It's a purely psychological pull that keeps him from tumbling over the edge into orgasm. He doesn't want to lose, though he knows the likelihood of him beating her is so unbelievably slim that he is, without a doubt, only denying what would be an inevitable loss. All the same, he's never let anything go easily, and he's not about to---  
  
It's a purely psychological pull that throws him over the edge. It's the way she cries out his name. For all that he wants her, right now he has her caught, as she'd said, and it strikes him to the core. He follows suit, crying out as he ejaculates messily over his own chest, pleasure shooting through his veins like ice.  
  
It makes sense why men kill for this, or for as much.


	14. The Moments in Between

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is only in the moments between words, when Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler are at once most themselves and least the Consulting Detective and the Woman, that they allow themselves a moment of intimacy. And yet, even then, they always less than truthful, even to themselves.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the delay in posting this chapter! Life got a little away from me. However, this will _not_ impact the next chapter's posting, which should resume regularly on 17 August 2014. Thanks for sticking with us!

She hates to lose, and there is no mistaking that she's lost in this round of their perpetual game. But there is simple physical release and then there is the unshakeable knowledge that they are well and truly caught by each other, and it is a long moment before Irene realizes her head is resting against his shoulder, that she can feel her own heartbeat race in her ears and his against her skin.  
  
She doesn't pull away, not yet wanting to break the moment, not trusting herself to have the control to disentangle herself properly and be untouchable Irene Adler again.  
  
  
He leans his head against hers, breathing in the scent of her hair, somewhat damp with sweat, mingling with the scent of sexuality. All of these things, he will probably want to forget later on, once this is all over. He'll want to delete it all to make room for cases on his hard drive. He'll want to forget how this made him _feel_. How this made _him_ feel.  
  
He allows himself to sit in bliss for this moment, not letting the thoughts of Moran come back like a poison, not letting them taint this. Because, he figures, when he's old and retired and tending his bees, he may feel that nostalgia that he's seen in others. He'll want this to remain somewhat pure. As pure as something with the Woman can be.  
  
"I don't love you," he breathes against her hair. The words are said with affection. A reminder of how much they are because of what they _are not_.  
  
  
She smiles at that, and there is a softness to the expression, an almost vulnerable affection. She indulges in it for the moment, telling herself that they are too close for it to be truly seen, because there is that same affection in his tone despite his words.  
  
"Love is boring," she agrees, releasing him and trailing her fingers up his torso, heedless of the milky white fluid clinging to her fingertips as she did.  
  
  
"Yes," he agrees, tracing his own hand up her back. Sex in any form is relatively messy, he decides, but the amount of bliss involved makes the mess seem irrelevant. Even intimate, in its own way, with her touching his chest despite the ejaculate. It's interesting, in its own way.  
  
He talks, because it is something he is good at, and he feels momentarily comfortable enough to voice his opinion on this subject, even though he feels he has very little information to work on.  
  
"With sexuality," he says, "There are a few different but very distinct sides. A primal side, very connected to desire and hormones, I think. A playful side, that's rather like a very grownup sort of game. And then there's the intimate side, the side people usually ruin with love and making it into something dull and romantic. Happy lies."  
  
He gets a little quiet, trying to work out how best to phrase himself. His confidence has started to wane, and unfortunately that can't matter, as he has to finish. "What I prefer about moments like this, is that you and I don't have to lie. We simply _are_."  
  
  
This is how they are best, she thinks, closing her eyes for a moment to better memorize the feel of his hand against her back, the feel of his chest beneath her fingers. She doesn't need to, she knows. She couldn't forget this holiday even if she tried; everything about this, about him, has been etched into her mind.  
  
But she indulges anyway, for the span of three heartbeats, before pulling away just far enough to look at him, to take in the fading confidence visible in the minute tells of his expression. She makes no move to shift from where she remains straddling him.  
  
She sounds genuinely curious when she answers. "And what are we, Mr. Holmes? The woman and the consulting detective, or Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes?"  
  
  
He wants to say that they are one in the same, that the Woman and the consulting detective could still be Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes. At the same time, it's---it's not quite that simple. Would the consulting detective talk about love so freely without as much disdain in his voice? Would Sherlock Holmes? And where was the line between who they were and who they decided to be?  
  
He doesn't like admitting he doesn't know. He also doesn't like admitting to himself that he isn't certain he'll ever properly know. He looks up at her, and she's so different from the Woman when he first met her. So different, and yet she's still very much the same. He wonders if, to her, he looks very different, as well.  
  
"Two people well and truly caught," he answers.  
  
  
She laughs, soft and genuine, at his answer. She supposes he is right in that. And more importantly, that what they are here and now is not really either. Inexplicable. Much like how they must seem to anyone else.  
  
Her hand lingers on his chest, but the other moves from him to brush a loose fallen curl from her face. "I'll miss this, when it's over," she admits. Because it _will_ be over, because she is meeting Moran, and nothing has changed, as she'd reminded them both.  
  
  
There is so much want involved with her. He wants to tell her that Sherlock Holmes and the consulting detective are one in the same. He wants to ask her when she is meeting Moran. He wants to be confident when he tells her he does not love her. He wants her.  
  
Right now, he also wants to tell her that it won't have to be over. Should she do what she plans, they'll be able to steal away for a holiday and have moments like this again. It would never happen, and even if it did, there would be an animosity between them. He _would_ fight her web, because that is what he does. He is, as Jim had said, on the side of the angels. This holiday is the only place where such a side doesn't exist.  
  
"Yes," he says. Because yes, she will miss it. And, although he will never admit it, he will, too.  
  
  
A silent laugh, little more than an exhale of air, as she leans in just far enough to brush her lips against his before she pulls away again to rise to her feet.  
  
This will fade, it always does with them. Still, that affection lingers in her voice. "You'll miss me, Sherlock."  
  
  
He lets out a small sigh.  
  
"Unfortunately, yes."


	15. With Morning Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With morning light comes another day, another plan and Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler return to the games they play. But will the lessons of London remain, or will they remain too much themselves to learn?

When morning light comes streaming through the small window and its old but functional blinds, Irene is gone from the room. Her bag remains, as does the gift from the heiress, the expensive Argentine designer shoes. But both woman and mobile phone are nowhere to be found in the small room. The pattern of sand on the floor of the room suggests the obvious, that she had left at some point, barefoot, by said door.  
  
A few steps out the door, and it is obvious where she had gone, down to a strip of beach, where several college-aged students are also milling about helplessly, raising their mobiles to the sky in supplication and hope of finding a signal. Even in their midst, she stands apart, now looking very much the part of the research assistant in a pair of cut-off denim shorts and a loose men's shirt (taken with absolutely no shame from Sherlock's luggage) thrown over a tank top, ostensibly to protect her pale skin from the tropical sun.  
  
Her irritation, however, far exceeds that of the students around her.  
  
  
When Sherlock Holmes wakes up, he comes to several conclusions. The most important of which is that he should _not_ take a shower immediately before going to bed. The screens in the windows are clearly not sufficient to hold back the biting gnats that have, apparently, attacked all visible parts of his arms. He scowls at the bright red dots all over his pale arms and the top part of his chest. He knew he'd _love_ the tropics, oh yes, but he wasn't aware just _how much_. He takes an antihistamine, his pain medications, and his antibiotics. He hasn't been this reliant on medication since his time at university.  
  
He dresses himself and notices that his preferred shirt has gone missing. How did she manage to find his favorite without even trying? The fact shouldn't make him smile, but it does. He throws on a hat, picks up his package to Moscow, and steps outside. The line for breakfast has already begun, but the Woman isn't to be found there. He drops the package in a mailbox and steps to the road.  
  
A few students are waving their mobiles around, trying to find signal. The Woman is, unsurprisingly, among them. He steps away from the road and over to the breakfast line.  
  
  
She spends another three fruitless minutes trying to find enough of a signal to send a text. It is almost astonishingly impressive how irritating the island made the simple task. She shoves the mobile back into her pocket, momentarily defeated by the elements, and turns away from the beach just in time to see him step away from the road and over to the line for breakfast.  
  
She readjusts the shirt that had fallen loose over one shoulder and changes her path to fall into the line directly in front of him. "I don't suppose your mobile is working, professor?" she asks, pulling on "Anthea's" faint French accent like another article of clothing.  
  
There is, however, no need to feign the irritation in her voice.  
  
  
"Oh, afraid not," he replies, cheerful and chipper despite how badly his arms are itching. "Of course, there's hardly any signal on the island at all. We could drive into town for you to try a land line, if you'd prefer."  
  
Her irritation is somewhat glorious, really. Considering how easily she can manage to irritate him.  
  
"Trying to message your colleague?" he asks. Hardly really _asks_ , though. There are very few people who would hold the Woman's attention so much as to have her out there, with the students.  
  
  
One student, holding a laden plate, glances from Irene to Sherlock and back again, noticing the fit of her clothes and his, and draws what he expects is the utterly correct conclusion. She, on the other hand, ignores him completely. Anthea Holmes the research assistant would likely care about such things, about propriety and gossip and professional relationships but Irene Adler is at the moment too irritated to properly _care_ what Anthea Holmes would do.  
  
Which was an impressive thing, all things considered.  
  
"Rather hard to text from a land line," she answers. "And you know I'd rather text."  
  
He doesn't really ask, and she doesn't really answer.  
  
  
"Well, I guess it would be better for you," Sherlock replies, not even remotely breaking character. He considers lighting a cigarette, but the students around him would most likely swarm for the first nicotine they'd seen since they arrived. The line to breakfast moves fairly quickly, with some natives dishing out scrambled eggs, french toast, and grits as well as water. Some of the students swarm around the water basin, filling up their canteens with the only fresh water on the island.  
  
"You're welcome to continue to try after breakfast," Sherlock says, casually. "We do have our research to get to, and we can't miss that meeting."  
  
  
The cafeteria is raucous with the noise of students, and Irene amuses herself momentarily figuring out what a few of them liked, and how many of them were, in fact, sleeping with each other. She doubts the young man trying his best to chat up a curvy blond realizes she is sleeping with the curly haired redhead next to her, not with the way he keeps trying to draw her attention.  
  
She moves with the line, accepting a desultory plate of eggs and french toast from an aproned cook, and giving him a shrewd, sidelong look. "Not worried I'll scoop your research and publish for myself?" she asks.  
  
  
"No," he replied, pouring himself a glass of the filtered rainwater. "Not really."  
  
Considering the man they would meet, and the things he... _preferred_ , Sherlock would've been far more comfortable knowing the Woman was far away from him. As it was, having her in the vicinity would keep Tayo more preoccupied, which would make disposing of him easier.  
  
Simple assassination was far beneath Sherlock's skills. Still, it was efficient. Sometimes.  
  
  
She gives one of the students a Look, and the student in question hands Irene a glass of water. Another sidelong look at Sherlock, and she lowers her voice.  
  
"You're planning something."  
  
  
"Following your lead," he says without so much as skipping a beat. He heads over to the small coffee dispenser. The liquid is foul and thick, but it will do in a pinch for energy.  
  
  
"I didn't think you enjoyed following."  
  
He heads to the coffee dispenser, and she slips away, to a table next to one of the cafeteria's windows. It's hardly private, but it was better than trying to squeeze in with the other research assistants. She knows well enough that to blend in with the disguise thrust upon her would require a knowledge base she didn't have. Which is _almost_ as irritating as the lack of mobile service.  
  
She sets her mobile on the table next to her and glares at it, as if strength of will alone will spontaneously make it work.  
  
  
He follows, slipping into the seat across from her. All of the tables are covered in the same cheap, checkered tablecloths, which are more for ease of cleaning than anything else. Had this island not housed the man he needed to see, he'd have been much happier somewhere more... _civilized_. With fewer scientists and students.  
  
"When do you meet your...researcher?" he asks, taking a bite of the toast.  
  
  
"At this rate? After we leave." It gives her away, to admit she hadn't already planned a meeting with Moran for San Salvador before she'd come, but there is no lie she can tell that wouldn't give her away. She stabs a bit of scrambled eggs with her fork and gestures out the window.  
  
"Fortunately geology's patient, isn't it?"  
  
  
"Geology might be, I'm not," he replies. He wonders, idly, if this is out of character for a geologist. He's known some in his time, they were very useful in understanding the way mud turns into rock over time (and the decomposition of bodies in said rock), but they were unusually dull.  
  
He takes a sip of the awful coffee. No matter how hard he tries to not want to scratch at the bites on his arms, he finds himself itching terribly. He refuses to be miserable about it, especially not when he's enjoying the Woman's disgruntled nature over her mobile.  
  
"We should take the truck down to the swamp," he says. "I can show you where the excavation will be."  
  
  
A twitch of her lip, the hint of momentary amusement breaking through her irritation, at his answer. She glances out the window, at bright blue sky and glittering turquoise water, and takes a bite of breakfast. Then promptly sets the fork back down, and jabs at the mobile fruitlessly again.  
  
"Of course. Impatient to be done with needing an assistant?"  
  
  
"I think we both know that isn't the case."  
  
He tried to sound as nonchalant as possible, as the good geologist would when talking to his companion, not Sherlock Holmes to Irene Adler. All the same, what she had said the previous night _was_ true: He would miss her. It was rather astounding, becoming aware of that.  
  
"I imagine you're already itching to be in your new position."  
  
  
"Eventually. I expect the offer will get better."  
  
She is skirting the fine edge between research assistant Anthea Holmes and Irene Adler with that answer, but that is part of what she'll miss about this, the way they dance along the edge, in the space between themselves and disguises.  
  
She doubts Moran would dance half so well, even after being taught. The mobile remains unresponsive and she slips it back into the pocket of her cut-offs. "But then I'm not the only one itching to be gone, am I, professor?"  
  
  
Sherlock _glares_ , and moves his hand away from his arm. He would need to go into town for some sort of a bite cream. Silently, he hopes she gets a horrific sunburn just to make up for this.  
  
"Actually, I'm quite excited to be out here. Cut off from technology. No one texting, no one bothering." This was, of course, a lie. Hardly the point.  
  
  
Her lips thin at his obvious lie, and her eyes narrow as she glares back. "The longer we're cut off, the longer before I contact your rival researcher?" she murmurs, taking a sip of water, and knowing her answer would irritate him, though perhaps not as much as his insect bites. "That's positively sentimental of you."  
  
  
One of the more frustrating things about the Woman is that if and when she chose to be _particularly_ irritating, it made her that much more _intriguing_. Despite being sexually satisfied the previous evening, her continual banter at him made him aware of the curve of her jaw and the curl in her hair, and the way her shorts rode up her thighs.  
  
It was a strange phenomenon. Perhaps it was because so few _could_ spar with him on any level whatsoever.  
  
"Perhaps I enjoy seeing you partake in the challenge," he says. "Of living technology-free."  
  
  
The water tastes flat, but in this heat she recognizes it's necessary and takes another sip, steadily staring at him with narrowed eyes over the rim of the glass. The slightest curve of her lip, the barest hint of a smirk, betrays the fact that she is, in fact, enjoying herself immensely.  
  
There are, after all, very few people who could keep up with her. She glances over the bustling cafeteria in response, her gaze resting momentarily on the redhead who just yesterday had begged off a cigarette, then a leggy brunette carefully balancing three mugs of tar-like coffee in one hand.  
  
"I'm certain I could find more ways of amusing myself than you could."  
  
  
He follows her gaze and tries to bite back a smirk. If anyone could enjoy themselves on an island full of ignorant university-aged students, it would be the Woman.  
  
"Brunette with the coffee?" he asks, lowering his voice just the slightest. "The one whose good shoes tore the second day she arrived."  
  
  
"Insecure," she dismisses, crossing her legs beneath the table, her instep brushing against the fabric of his trousers. "Thinks her peers are convinced she's only here because of her looks or her family's money."  
  
She doesn't bother hiding her own smirk as she adds, "It's obvious in the way she holds the coffee. Bleached blond with the sunglasses?"  
  
  
"Sleeping with the teacher's assistant," Sherlock replies without so much as half a glance in the direction of the girl. "Obvious from the way he widens his stance around her. She wants to be sleeping with the professor, mind."  
  
Next to her is an extremely handsome professor in a purple tee-shirt, who adjusts his glasses as he looks at his notes in front of him.  
  
"The older one," Sherlock amends.  
  
Next to that professor is an even older man, this one balding with a little extra weight on his hips and under his brightly colored Hawaiian shirt. The blonde looks over to the older man with a brief but absolutely adoring look. Very smitten. Also obvious.  
  
"Professor with the glasses?" he inquires.  
  
  
"She's hardly the only one sleeping with the teacher's assistant, now is she?"  
  
The amusement in her tone is replaced by momentary annoyance on her face as Irene realizes she'll have to take a second look at the professor in question to get the answer. She casually knocks her fork off the table and steals a glance as she retrieves it.  
  
"Sleeping with the blond's crush," she answers. "Neither of their wives know. That's impressive."  
  
  
"That probably means they're involved in something themselves. For them to be _that_ obvious and for them not to notice, they're just not paying attention."  
  
  
She straightens, setting the fork back on the table, and arches an eyebrow at his response. "Wouldn't that be a surprise to the older one. He's got to be on his fifth promise of 'never again', at least."  
  
  
"I doubt he's really breaking his promise. He did say he'd never lay eyes on another woman again, didn't he?"  
  
But it's something else, something in the way the man looks into his food, or stares at the shiny water bottle on his table.  
  
No.  
  
No wait. The water bottle is shiny, reflective. He's looking right at Sherlock and the Woman.  
  
  
There is a subtle shift in his attention, the sort of minute tell that she would not have noticed three, four weeks ago. The sort of awareness that it took intimacy to notice.  
  
She expects her own attention is shifting in that same way, though she doesn't glance over, instead turning to the window deliberately even as she murmurs, "Find something interesting?"  
  
  
"I need a cigarette," he says, finishing his coffee quickly and standing, plate still half-full of food as he heads to the place to drop it off. The workers glare at him. All the food on the island is brought on by ferry, so he's seen as a typical American, wasting what little they have. This, to him, is perfectly fine. There's a door to the exit right by the drop off, and he waits for the Woman there.  
  
  
She, on the other hand, takes a few more uninterested bites, her attention seemingly still on the window and the view outside before rising and feigning a need for the facilities. The expectation is that she'll be back shortly.  
  
Irene doubles back, and approaches the exit door from the outside, dodging around a skittering crab as she does so.  
  
"What happened to the cigarette?"  
  
  
He steps out, letting the door shut behind him. He takes her arm.  
  
"The professor, the student's crush. Watching us, and subtly too. Too subtle for Tayo, and not of the right ethnicity, he's unbelievably xenophobic, unless he's branched out. Possible, of course, but unlikely. Balance of probability states that, therefore..."  
  
He raises an eyebrow in the Woman's direction. "When did you tell him you would meet him here?"  
  
  
She frowns but doesn't pull away when he takes her arm.  
  
"I didn't," she answers. She doesn't tell him why, doesn't admit to wanting to be certain he was recovered before she started playing in earnest again. The morning sun was bright and the opportunity for _sentiment_ had long evaporated with dawn. "If he's here, one of us was followed."  
  
  
"What, and I didn't notice?" Sherlock says, incredulous. He looks to her. " _We_ didn't notice?"  
  
Not Moran, maybe? His mind starts whirring, trying to put together the pieces, figure out who could've possibly followed them, and how.  
  
"Someone working with Tom, maybe. Scoping us out before we meet him. Or working with one of our friends from back in Hong Kong, could've heard about our travel arrangements. Your heiress didn't know where you were leaving to, correct?"  
  
  
She looks insulted by the very question. "Do you really think I would be that _obvious_?"  
  
Still, the question remains of _why_ they had been watched, and Irene's brow furrows as she tries to recall everything she can of the professor in question from that extra second glance. A professor, that had been certain, used to lecturing with a self-importance that couldn't be faked. Married, also obvious. She should have been listening to the students' gossip, should have learned the ins and out of every single person at the research facility within hours, but the previous evening and the morning's lack of mobile service had distracted her.  
  
"If he's your contact's man, the only thing to do would be to beat him to the punch."  
  
  
She's right, of course. He doesn't hesitate, he starts back towards the room to grab his bag. A large green heron is sitting on the bonnet of their vehicle, but Sherlock imagines it will fly off once they start moving.  
  
"We're meeting him in town," he says to the Woman. "He says it will be less...obvious. Tayo, by the mangrove swamp on the south side of the island."  
  
  
While he is getting his bag, Irene makes the pretense of slipping on a pair of shoes, flats this time, from her bag and in the same motion tucks a small pistol at the small of her back. She had, after all, planned to meet Moriarty's assassin, and she wouldn't have done it unarmed.  
  
"Are they both expecting a research assistant in tow, or will it be a surprise?" she asks, adjusting the fall of her borrowed shirt so that it would conceal the most obvious of the pistol's bulk at her back.  
  
  
"Tom's expecting you," Sherlock says. "Tayo---"  
  
He looks over to the Woman, and then steps outside, back towards the vehicle. The heron is still sitting on it, stubbornly.  
  
"He has a certain number of things he _likes_ , and they suited some of Jim's more colorful interests." This is, in Sherlock's mind, an easier way of saying that he liked to rape and murder English women. Brutally. "I think it's safe to say you'll be staying away from him."  
  
  
She raises an eyebrow at his answer. They kept information from each other in a myriad of ways and for a number of reasons. This time, however, brought to Irene's mind Las Vegas, reminded her of the stubborn self-important surety that made dealing with him occasionally utterly insufferable.  
  
"Will I? You do remember how well it worked the last time you tried to make a decision for me."  
  
  
"Oh, and there's the arguing again," he says, getting into the driver's seat. The heron turns on the bonnet and stares at him, as if willing him to go back to breakfast and leave it on its lookout. Sherlock scowls at it.  
  
He slams his door shut. "I don't care what parts of this web you want to save, Woman," he says, dropping his false accent. "But Tayo Osensia can _not_ be part of it."


	16. Lighthouses and Hidden Shoals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Intimacy may reveal their sentiment, but Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes define themselves by the secrets they keep and the motivations they refuse to let the other change. But will they stumble upon cross purposes at the worst possible time, or will they put aside their differences to face off against one of Moriarty's more vicious killers?

She considers climbing into the back again, but to do so would require keeping up the disguise, and by the way he's discarded his own false accent, to have to keep hers would be a disadvantage. So instead she gives up the deliberate distance and climbs into the passenger seat, shutting her own door pointedly quiet before glaring at him and shedding the French research assistant's accent.  
  
"Oh don't be hypocritical, Mr. Holmes. Obviously you care enough to dictate what can and can't be saved," she snaps back. "It's simple self-preservation to want to know what  _won't_ be spared your tender mercies."   
  
  
He starts the vehicle. The heron does not move.  
  
"He won't be," Sherlock says. He turns his head back to face her. "I'm going to kill him."   
  
  
A part of her wonders if that particular heron was simply incapable of self-preservation as the engine revs.   
  
She remains expressionless, only raising an eyebrow in response. "Suddenly bloodthirsty again, I see."   
  
  
"Hardly," Sherlock responds, his voice cold. "There are simply some aspects of his web that aren't worth preserving, and others that are better left  _cut away._ "  
  
He revs the engine and the vehicle moves forward. The heron turns back and glares at them.  
  
"I see we've found your soulmate in stubbornness," he comments.   
  
  
"And here I thought we'd just found your better half," she retorts drily. She stares for a moment at the bird's beady eyes, then turns her attention to the beach.  
  
"The most obvious criteria would be body count. But I expect Moran has significantly more murders under his belt than Osensia, and you haven't marked  _him_ for death."   
  
  
"Are you implying that I can't have my own choice on what is or is not salvagable in this web? I have been following them far longer than you."  
  
The heron, perhaps noting the mild hostility within the vehicle, cawed and took off, large wings beating in the hot air.   
  
  
"I'd never presume to tell you what you can't have an opinion on," she answers archly, tracking the heron as it took flight. "But you aren't the one with a personal stake in whether or not what's left  _is_ salvageable."  
  
A sidelong glance. "Quite the opposite, in fact."   
  
  
"You don' t want to salvage him."   
  
  
Her lips thin. "We're back to criteria."   
  
  
"Yes," he says. "Criteria. Important criteria, Woman. And he would sooner kill you in the way he's killed his other victims rather than listen to you."   
  
  
Her expression smooths to blankness, and Irene returns her gaze to the scenery outside. "Serial killer then, or just an assassin with a specialty?"   
  
  
"Serial killer," Sherlock replies, turning the lorry out onto the road. "Worse than that. Some people kill because of psychological damage, some kill because they're paid for it, some kill out of passion..."  
  
He doesn't bother swerving to miss the small land crabs that skitter in the way.  
  
"Osesina kills because he likes it." He glances in the Woman's direction. "From what I've discovered, Jim found him  _funny_ ."   
  
  
She catches the motion of him glancing over out of the corner of her eye and turns her head just enough to meet his eye. "You do realize you could have said that from the beginning and saved yourself 'the arguing again'," she says.  
  
"Rather than being unreasonable and overprotective."   
  
  
"Overprotective," he says, with an annoyed scoff. "Hardly. It simply wasn't relevant."  
  
Though, it is, really. He isn't being overprotective, he tells himself. He's simply using his own knowledge to prevent her being hurt. The idea of her being there when he kills Osesina...it bothers him, though. Perhaps because it doesn't involve a gun this time. The brutality of this assassination is...unpleasant.  
  
Perhaps he's protecting himself.   
  
  
They are, perhaps, both protecting themselves in their own ways.  
  
She smirks at his annoyed scoff, though the expression doesn't last, fading back into careful neutrality as she keeps most of her attention on the road ahead and the skittering crabs. It did make one wonder just how  _many_ there were on the island that vehicular traffic didn't seem to put a dent in their population.  
  
"I have half a mind to demand your criteria for what's relevant."  
  
She's joking. Mostly. Maybe.   
  
  
"I'd never give in to your demands," he replies without emotion or hesitation.  
  
He slows as another car passes on the left. Most of the vehicles on the island are older, held together simply because they could not possibly afford more. On the right, they pass the only clinic on the island. Small and pristine in comparison to the other buildings.  
  
"He murders women," he says. "Particularly English women. Sexual gratification, I think. He's not worth saving. As an assassin, I imagine he's effective, but---you could do better."   
  
  
There's no need to point out the discontinuity between his words and his actions. They're both observant enough to see it, and the information he's offering is more interesting than needling him, at least for the moment.  
  
And it  _is_ interesting, as she turns the new knowledge around in her mind. "You arranged a meeting, alerted him. Hard to dispose of a man who must be expecting something of the sort."   
  
  
"Bringing him out of hiding," Sherlock says. "He thinks I'm giving him something. Something he wants. I'll simply...take advantage of his presence."  
  
What is she planning? The Woman manages to think in ways that surprise him, and he can't help but feel a bubbling of---not concern, not really. Trepidation, really. He can't predict her.   
  
  
She says nothing for a long moment, eventually shifting to tuck her legs up underneath her.   
  
"How's your shoulder?"   
  
  
He considers saying something dismissive, but decides against it. "Sore," he admits. "I left the sling behind."  
  
Primarily, because he has returned to the world of stubbornness. Also, because he doesn't want to appear weak to Osesina.  
  
"What would you have done?" he asks, suddenly. "If Moran had killed me?"   
  
  
"Hardly relevant."  
  
She tells herself it wouldn't change anything. That she'd have still taken what was left for Moriarty's web for herself, to make her own protection. She doesn't tell him she'd have broken every bone in Moran's body before she killed him.  
  
"You'll be at a disadvantage, if Osesina tries to defend himself."   
  
  
Sherlock scowls. "Yes," he admits. "Which is why I'm going to make absolutely certain he won't."  
  
He sighs, and reaches with his bad arm into his pocket, producing the slim garrotte he'd fashioned out of hard, functional plastic and a wooden handle. No metal, no detection when going through metal detectors. He'd fixed the garrotte so it could be handled one-handed, the loop circling itself.  
  
"Savage," he says, disgusted with the tool and the task at hand. "Osesina is known for garroting his victims, so he'll simply vanish into the list of those he's killed. Far less obvious to anyone watching."   
  
  
She ignores the phantom feel of razor wire at her throat at his explanation. No doubt he'd be pleased to think he's warning her off or some other idiocy if he knew. So instead Irene swallowed and glanced over at him, at the way he moves with the bad arm. Not debilitating, but noticeably slowed.  
  
"You'd have a better chance of success if his attention was divided."   
  
  
"You mean between me being near him and wanting to kill you?" Sherlock says. He winces as he puts the weapon back in his pocket. "Don't consider it sentiment if I think that's a very,  _very_ bad idea."  
  
It isn't sentiment, he thinks. It's just too dangerous.   
  
  
"And it isn't sentiment to point out you can barely put that back in your pocket without pain," she answers, sounding calm and rational.   
  
She taps a finger against the door of the vehicle, an idle rhythm plucked from some memory of a tune in the back of her mind. "It's self-preservation, Mr. Holmes. If he is as dangerous as you say, it'd be in my best interests if you were successful."  
  
And, it would give her a closer look at the man in question, let her see for herself what he  _liked_ , and if he is in fact as dangerous as Sherlock Holmes was claiming.   
  
  
He considers this. Logically, she's right, of course. But he can't have her close, can't have her have the possibility of being caught by the man.  
  
"You can stay in the vehicle, parked on the other side of the building," he says. "Start it up, distract him. The sound will certainly be loud enough."  
  
But Osesina will not be able to see her. Or her him.   
  
  
"Too obvious," she dismisses. "He'll hear it, realize you're  _trying_ to distract him, and be even more on guard than before."  
  
She glances at him again, and there is a look in her eyes as she works through the possibilities. For a moment it isn't about getting what she wants, isn't just about getting a glimpse. Now it's about manipulation, about exploiting weakness and using what little she knows about Osesina to figure out the best way to distract him.  
  
"It'd be best to distract without knowing he's being distracted, something that will make him underestimate you at the same time."   
  
  
"You've played that ploy before," Sherlock says. As they go over a hill, they pass a small set of shops, paint peeling and with rickety-looking air conditioning units attached. The village on this island is clearly in disrepair, especially in comparison to the research centre.  
  
"If you're suggesting you go in instead of me, it's not happening," he says.   
  
  
The village's state is hard to miss, compared to the research center, and it reinforces the clout of Mycroft Holmes' contact here. Still, Irene shakes her head with a laugh of disbelief.   
  
"Me? Going up alone against a man whose extracurricular activity is precisely to target women like me for murder? Now who's being ridiculous? I'm suggesting assistance, coming with you. Distract him with physical presence, make him underestimate you for being careless enough to bring me with you." A quirk of her lips. "I can hardly do anything rash under your watchful eye, now can I?"   
  
  
He sets his jaw, considering. She can't do anything rash, not really. But it's not  _her_ he's worried about. Not worried. Worried is too harsh an emotion, implies too much sentiment. Concerned. He pulls up to the side of a small store and stops the vehicle.  
  
Outside, drinking a ginger beer and reading a paper, is a twenty-something Caucasian man wearing a Gerace Research Centre tee-shirt. He looks up, instantly recognizing Sherlock as the new outsider, and Mycroft Holmes.  
  
"I'll get Osesina's location," he says to the Woman before he steps out. "Do you need any supplies?"   
  
  
He's considering it, she can tell, and she is willing to concede  _something_ if it gets her what she's after. A chance to get a glimpse at the man in question, to judge for herself whether he was as unsalvagable as Sherlock seemed to insist. She ignores the fact that if she stays close, the pistol at her back could become useful if something goes wrong. There is nothing at all protective about that plan. As she'd told him, it was simple self-preservation.  
  
Certainly had nothing to do with any sort of concern or worry for his continued well-being.  
  
"Just agreement would suffice."   
  
  
"I'll consider it," he replies. Not an agreement, not a guarantee. Just a consideration. Her logic is sound and all he has opposing it is a  _feeling_ that it isn't the right idea.  
  
He nods to the shop. "There's a landline in there. Wires going out of the building."  
  
Perhaps she'll have more of a desire to live with more than just her life on the line.   
  
  
"I'll consider it," she answers, untucking herself from her seat and stepping back out into the warm tropical air.   
  
She leaves him to his meeting and walks towards the shop, and for a moment does consider using said landline, but the idea does not sit well in Irene's mind. The landline would let her get in touch with Moran, yes, but it would give away too much. It'd be a break in the routine, a phone call from a traceable number rather than a cool text from a disposable mobile phone. Which would give away exactly where she was. And she expects even he would notice something so obviously out of place and look into it.  
  
So instead, Irene enters the shop and purchases a bottle of water and a package of cigarettes. Exorbitant, really.   
  
  
Tom is not the most brilliant of men, but he's terrified of Mycroft Holmes. The moment Holmes says that he needs information, Tom is more than willing to give it. Due to Osesina's family being long-term residents of the island, he's been generally well-thought-of, and the idea that he's a cold killer behind the missing students at Gerace has never crossed his mind.  
  
He gives Sherlock the name of another of Mycroft's associates, this one in Dubai. Someone else who, apparently, has never met the elder Holmes brother but knows of him by association. Useful for later.  
  
With that, Tom prepares to leave, off to pick up more students from the airport. Sherlock heads to the shop. Lights a cigarette.   
  
  
Irene spends a few minutes chatting with the shopkeeper, exchanging bland pleasantries about the village, about the pleasant atmosphere of the remote island. The shopkeeper likes to talk, is lonely and desperate for gossip and company. There is, after all, a limited number of people on the island, and the steady stream of students never stay long enough to develop any real repertoire. So Irene listens, sifting through the gossip to hear about any newcomers that may have stood out.   
  
She takes a sip of water from her bottle, making sympathetic, interested sounding noises at the right moments, drumming the package of cigarettes between her fingers against the counter as the door opens again.   
  
  
Sherlock crushes out the cigarette and steps inside, finding the Woman exchanging small talk for information with the girl behind the counter. He imagines idle gossip, for the Woman, is much like it is for Sherlock: Useful when appropriate.  
  
He picks up a package of bite cream and the insect spray suggested to him by Tom. He scratches at his shoulder as a man all but shoves his way past him. The shop is hardly that small.   
  
  
Her eyes flick towards the door when it opens, and a tiny twitch at the corner of her mouth is the only acknowledgment she gives that she's seen him. The shop girl continues babbling about the life-long residents, about whose family is renovating what building, about whose daughter has been seen with which inappropriate companion.  
  
Irene is only partially listening now, her attention divided between the shopkeeper's gossip and the new occupants of the store.   
  
  
He moves, and something in his pocket crinkles. A note? Interesting.  
  
He steps over to the counter and stands behind the Woman with his items tucked behind his back. She's already mentioned the insect bites which she seems to not have a problem with. The fact that he feels the need to hide his purchases makes him irritated. He has nothing to be embarrassed about, but around the Woman, he wants to impress. He has always wanted to impress with her. Irritating.   
  
  
He takes a place behind her and she continues chatting with the shopkeeper for another minute, expecting to be interrupted by his attempt to make a purchase. When he doesn't, she finishes her conversation with the girl, saying something trite and apologetic, and steps aside, turning to rest her elbows on the counter, every inch the casual vacationer as she watches and waits for him to make his purchase, a smirk on her lips.   
  
  
She's not going to leave the counter.  
  
Damn Woman.  
  
He puts the items on the counter and fishes out a few American dollars, offering them over. He also purchases a pack of cigarettes.  
  
"It's a ten minute walk," he tells the Woman.   
  
  
"Good, I could use a walk," she answers. She glances over at the array of items he'd purchased and finds nothing of particular embarrassment or interest in them. She slips the package of cigarettes into her back pocket and takes another sip of water.  
  
"I assume you're coming."   
  
  
He glares, stuffing the insect spray into his pocket before heading towards the door. She does so very much know how to rub on his nerves. And she says  _he_ wanted to cause issue with  _her_ .  
  
He steps past her to the door, not bothering to hold it open for her as he steps back out into the tropical heat. Tom is gone. This is for the best.  
  
"I'm only agreeing because you'll follow me in any case," he says once she steps out as well.   
  
  
"Of course," she answers, raising a hand to shade her eyes before they adjust to the bright tropical sun again.  
  
The weight of the pistol at her back is almost comforting, now that he's agreed. "And certainly not because you can't find a logical reason to say no."   
  
  
There are many, many reasons to say no, he thinks. But none of which she'll listen to. She has to see Osesina for herself, to understand the things that Sherlock knows. He can only hope she won't die in the process. Hope. No, hope is sentimental. He has to make certain she survives so he can have her admit that he was right.  
  
The road is a steep incline. It's dirt paved once with gravel a long time in the past. Once they've past the shop, it's the abandoned buildings again, overgrown with jungle as the natural world tries to creep back where the vestiges of civilization have broken through. He supposes it's all very beautiful.  
  
"He's staying near the local lighthouse," he says. "There's a house near there. We'll keep the conversation to a minimum."   
  
  
She nearly loses her footing on the road twice. Between the steep incline and the occasional pocket of gravel buried beneath the dirt, it is treacherous to someone unprepared for the terrain, but she sets her jaw and says nothing about it.  
  
There's the buzz of mosquitoes, or some other biting insect, humming at the lower end of her hearing, but for the most part time and nature's war on civilization was a quiet one. Irene nods, occasionally diverting her gaze from the road ahead to a bit of bright tropical growth that catches her eye.   
  
"Of course, but I'm not the one eager to chat, now am I?" she asks with a smirk.   
  
  
"No, in his mind, you'll be the one who he'll want to kill," he says. She's a little older than his usual type, but that won't stop him, Sherlock imagines. He's taking the terrain more easily than she is, but that's probably only due to the pain medication he's been taking for his shoulder.  
  
He keeps thinking about how awfully this could go wrong. The distance from people, the solitude of the house and lighthouse, the jungle that will separate them. And the Woman, the primary target. If it didn't have to be  _now_ ...  
  
He lets out a short sigh, and reaches into his pocket. He turns to her and hands it over.  
  
"You'll need this."   
  
  
She stops when he turns around and she can see what is in his hand. Her lips thin, and a spark of anger gleams bright in her eyes. Irene reaches for the pistol at her back and turns it over in her hands. The clip was, in fact, an empty. She slides it out and forces herself not to snatch the loaded one out of his hand.   
  
"Don't trust me to have a loaded weapon at your back now?" she asks, voice clipped.   


  
"I've been shot once this month," Sherlock says. "I'd rather not have it happen again."  
  
It's not to say he doesn't trust her----no, actually, it is. But trusting the Woman is a lot like trusting a panther. The Woman is a panther in many, many ways. Sleek, elegant, and vicious. Also, impossible to fully trust, as it can never be domesticated, not really. Oh, when it's willing to curl up next to you, you appreciate it, but you're always aware that it can turn and devour you without a second thought.  
  
He nods to a path in the jungle. "Watch out for poisonwood," he says.   
  
  
It shouldn't hurt, of course. He's said it before. And it is obvious from the secrets they keep that neither of them trusts each other. Still, she fits the loaded clip back into the weapon with perhaps just a touch more force than necessary, and the sharp gleam remains in her eyes as she tucks it away again.  
  
She is, after all, only angry at having been fooled.  
  
Chin high, she brushes ahead of him. "I'll manage, Mr. Holmes. But your concern is touching."   
  
  
She's angry. That much is obvious. She shouldn't be surprised that he found out about her gun, nor that he didn't trust her enough to let her keep the clip. Or perhaps she's angry at herself for not knowing. Whatever the reason, she's moving ahead of him. He doesn't want her getting there before he can stop something happening.  
  
He follows, reaching out to catch her arm.  
  
"Watch out for that," he says. Ahead of her is a thin, yellow web with a black and yellow spider about the size of his hand crawling across it slowly.   
  
  
She stops, the sudden jerking motion betraying the fact that she hadn't seen, or at the very least wasn't familiar with, the spider in question. She eyes it for a moment, unwilling to be reminded of the late Jim Moriarty, and steps away, breaking his touch on her arm.  
  
"I'd suggest you take the lead, but we've already established you'd rather not have a loaded gun at your back."   
  
  
"I doubt you'd use it to shoot me now," he says, reaching out and gently moving the web aside. The spider moves with the web, out of the way.  
  
"Because if you did, you'd be in a tropical jungle half a mile away from Tayo Osesina. I really don't think that's somewhere you'd want to be." With that, he steps ahead of her.  
  
Though he'll never admit it aloud, he is very grateful that she's brought a weapon. And more than mildly impressed. She manages things he can't, and while he can  _guess_ how she managed to bring a weapon here, he can't possibly prove it. She's rather good.   
  
  
She doesn't tell him that there is currently a private bodyguard to an Argentinian heiress in Nassau frantic about the loss of his firearm, and utterly unable to report it to the local police, since it had never been declared in his luggage. She doesn't tell him about the airport mechanic whose spoiled daughter had expensive tastes and needed a debt repaid who'd slipped a small bag through behind security and left it in a locker.   
  
She doesn't offer, and even if he asked, she'd make him work it out. She enjoys her mysteries, after all.  
  
"I'm certain you could make me change my mind with very little effort."   
  
  
"You're far more self-contained than that," he replies. As he says that, he very nearly avoids stepping on a line of fire ants and almost reaches his hand into poisonwood. He gestures in its direction.  
  
"Avoid that."  
  
There was very little in this jungle that wasn't better off avoided, apart from the large yellow spiders that peppered the trees. The heat was thick and heavy here, the water from the nearby caves seeming to make everything steam. He deftly hopped over a broken piece of clay rock, which housed another colony of ants.   
  
  
She is less certain of what she's looking for, and because of it steps into the line of fire ants as she avoids the plant he gestures towards.   
  
"Perhaps, but you're very good at being irritating," she retorts. She refuses to ask for help, and without his height, it is harder to hop cleanly over the rock, and she brushes against that too. Another half dozen steps, and she inhales sharply as pricks of what feel like fire dig into her calf.   
  
  
He feels a fantastic stab of satisfaction at the way she gasps. Hopefully the ants will leave rather unpleasant welts on her legs. A childish thing to think, and he will possibly feel bad for it later.  
  
He stops long enough to move another banana spider out of their path. "The lorry is back at the road," he says. "You can wait for me there if you'd rather." He hops over another broken rock, but lands a little short, hitting his bad shoulder against the trunk of a red-barked tree. He bites back a howl.   
  
  
Looking down, she can see the line of ants making their way up her leg, dark against pale skin, and slaps them away, though not before another two manage to leave rising, heated welts. She looks up to answer, just in time to see him hit the tree.   
  
Her instinct is to start for him, and she is two steps there before she realizes that she is, in fact, still quite angry, and as long as he isn't passing out, perhaps a little pain is precisely what he deserves.  
  
She approaches carefully, stepping over the broken rock in question, and now looking at every surface for a telltale trail of ants. "Perhaps you'd be better off waiting at the car," she answers tartly.   
  
  
"Oh, and you're going to kill him on your own?" he replies with a little added bite to his words. His shoulder practically screams at him in protest, and it, along with all of his insect bites, stings from sweat.  
  
All the same, he can't leave her. He's angry, but he isn't angry enough to do that. He looks to her, sweaty and angry and flushed, and he's reminded, briefly, of why he finds her so very physically attractive. He nods down another trail.  
  
"We're nearly there," he says.   
  
  
"You seem to think he would kill me. I'm quite proficient at self-defense in advance."

 

She pushes a strand of sweat dampened hair from her brow and tries (fails) not to look terribly relieved. "That is only good news if you're about to tell me there's another way out of here other than this one."   
  
  
He pauses, turns to look back at her, and continues to lead the way down the trail.   
  
  
She rolls her eyes, sighs, and follows in irritated, irritable silence until they are nearly out of the dense vegetation.  
  
"Your shoulder?"  
  
Not that she cares.   
  
  
"Fine," he replies, tersely. "Your legs?"  
  
He gestures for her to avoid another swath of poisonwood as they near the gate surrounding the lighthouse. The lighthouse is an old, well-kept relic from the turn of the 20th century, and despite how difficult it is to get to, it is frequented by tourists, he believes. Not today, however. Right now, it's them and the lighthouse. And the small house with a broken air conditioning unit. A foul smell comes from the house, from a box near the door. Large land crabs, Sherlock thinks. Probably dozens of them, thrown together. Dying and breeding and eating each other.   
  
  
The bites were, in fact, extraordinarily painful for how tiny they were. A little raised blister had already appeared at each site, and the skin around it was red and hot to the touch. Still, Irene expects it is simply uncomfortable and not fatal, given his reaction.  
  
"It'll take more than a few ant bites to be rid of me," she answers.  
  
She looks up, taking in the lighthouse and the house, plus the surrounding gate, and wrinkles her nose at the smell of decay that accompanies the saline breeze. She gestures towards the lighthouse, and raises a questioning eyebrow.   
  
  
"He's acting as caretaker," he says. "Somewhere just outside of the range of the rest of the village."  
  
He looks back at the decrepit house and then over to the Woman. He shouldn't be putting her in this danger. Guilt, odd as it is, flows through him at that realization. He's going to be putting her in danger, because he can't do this alone. He  _needs_ an assistant, he always has. The Woman is simply the most frustrating assistant anyone could possibly ask for.  
  
"Get the back door open," he says. "And don't accept anything he offers you to drink."   
  
  
She scrutinizes the house with a sharp, considering eye, taking in its derelict state. The salt in the air has no doubt rusted every bit of iron it could reach, and mouldered most of the wood within. That should help.   
  
Irene nods at his words, a brief acknowledgment. She doesn't argue, for once; they're close enough that arguing would get her nowhere, and she is willing to admit that at this point, he has more information than she does. She hesitates still, and draws a breath to speak, to tell him to be careful, but that was absolutely idiotic. They were supposedly here to kill a man; being careful had been left back at the road.  
  
She swallows it back, and straightens, her hand brushing the concealed pistol at her back, and heads towards the house.   
  
"Don't be late, or there might not be anything left for you to do," she says over her shoulder. 


	17. Shipwrecked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> London has marked them once, scarred them with bullet wounds and sentiment. Will San Salvador be just another scar, or the last?

Her confidence is reassuring, if completely misplaced. She starts towards the house and he's tempted to rush forward, to grab her arm, and to tell her everything he knows about Tayo Osesina. To tell her about the mutilated bodies, about the sexual violence, about the way they were killed. To tell her that if she's going to do this, she should know.  
  
But the Woman is brilliant. It's why he---it's what makes her so fascinating. She knows how to find out what people like. She'll read him, Sherlock tells himself. She'll read Osesina, and she'll know.  
  
He waits at the edge of the jungle, waits for her to go inside.  
  
  
She picks her way past the gate and around the house, keeping away from the windows and giving a wide berth to the box of land crabs. Its presence is curious, but given the smell and the way it simply  _exists_ as if part of the decor, Irene isn't certain she  _wants_ to know anything beyond the obvious sadistic streak the man in question displays.  
  
She skirts around some of the local flora and fauna until she reaches the back door. She glances back towards the jungle's edge, though she tells herself it isn't for Sherlock Holmes, just preliminary caution to keep her routes open.  
  
She straightens, smooths her expression into one of sheepish innocence touched with worry. It is not a disguise she wears comfortably, but it will do, to play the innocent tourist, needing assistance. She knocks on the back door, and calls out to anyone within earshot in her own voice, obviously British, obviously feminine.  
  
  
Sherlock can hear the Woman speak, and he watches the front door open. Tayo Osesina. Sherlock recognizes him from his pictures. Tall and very lean, he is from Jamaica and has extremely dark skin and a wiry frame. Twenty-five at the oldest. On his face are horn-rimmed glasses, held together with tape.  
  
The muscles of Sherlock's shoulders tighten. He knows what this man can do to the Woman. He waits for the right moment and begins to circle the lighthouse to go to the back of the house.  
  
  
There's movement, and Irene gives the latch at the back door a firm pull, feeling the rusted metal give ever so slightly before she steps away from it and towards the front again. The helpless, unknowing tourist looking for help. The back door can be forced, but it'd be easier if she can get inside.  
  
She rounds to the front and when she sees the man in question, she is momentarily surprised. He's younger than she expected, seemingly mild with his repaired glasses, but there's violence in his fingers. She confirms the guess of sadism from the crabs in the set of his jaw, and it is enough to make her cautious despite the disguise.  
  
She adds a bit of a feigned limp to her walk as she approaches the front of the house. "Excuse me," she says, all polished posh English despite the leaves caught in her hair from the hike and the way she feigns the limp, gesturing to the red welts on her calf, then at his door. "I don't suppose you know of a better way out? I think I have a bit of a bad reaction to the local vegetation. Could use a moment without getting bitten by anything."  
  
She's careful to seem as benign as possible, as helpless. It's obvious that's what would work best, to play to what he likes.  
  
  
As he rounds the lighthouse, he reaches into his pocket and pulls out the note. He freezes as he reads the words, and then looks around. No sign of anyone here, not in the jungle. Not this far from everywhere else.  
  
_You can't kill all of us._   
  
Sherlock needs to figure out who the man was, he needs to re-conjure him in his mind, to pull up his face, his image exactly. But not here, not right now. Right now, he has a job to do. A job far beneath him, but something that will make this island safer. Will bring him one step closer to going back to being Sherlock Holmes.  
  
Even though that last thought doesn't hold as much appeal as it used to.  
  
  
He takes one look at her, and she can tell he'll let her in. She simply used to  _know_ , but now not only does she know, but she can read it in the finer things. In the now-obvious dilation of dark eyes, in the way he swallows, in the set of his legs as he looks at her, draws himself up.  
  
Being on holiday with Sherlock Holmes has changed the way she sees things, it would seem.  
  
Still, she steps into the house with him, swallowing past the instinct to flee back into the open given what she could see in the callouses of his hands, and she continues keeping up a stream of polite and meaningless chatter at Osesina, loud enough to be heard, if not distinctly, from nearby.  
  
The loaded pistol at her back is a solid, comforting weight as Osesina offers her a glass of water and she accepts, sounding grateful, as he turns away to find a glass, and she takes a few steps towards the back door.  
  
  
Sherlock waits, hidden by the edge of the lighthouse. He can see the Woman moving within the house, see her stepping towards the back door. He pulls out the garrote, ready to use it. If she can keep him distracted just long enough for Sherlock to step around him, pull it tight, they should be fine.  
  
He won't tell her about the note. She may just agree with it.  
  
There's a snap somewhere behind him. Sherlock turns his head. Was that a person? An animal? The wind? If he weren't so distracted by the Woman being in Osesina's presence, he'd know the sound, know what it symbolized. But he doesn't and there isn't time to find out.  
  
  
Osesina steps out of her sight, one assumes to the kitchen, to get the glass of water. No doubt to add whatever drug Sherlock expects to the drink, something to knock her out, or at least make her temporarily biddable, given what he liked. It gives Irene a minute, maybe a minute and a half, to drop the feigned limp and move to the other side of the room, to the back door. She unlocks it deftly and pushes, intending to prop it open just enough to be pulled open easily.  
  
But the salt air has rusted the door hinges, and upon being opened, the door groans and grinds with a loud squeak.  
  
She freezes.  
  
  
There's another twig snapping, and Sherlock turns back again. Closer this time. A group of students? No, not likely. Not at this hour. Perhaps---  
  
He hears the squeak from the house, and turns to the see the Woman opening the door. From his position, he can also see Osesina in the kitchen, the sudden look of aggression on his face.  
  
Plans go out the window. Sherlock bolts towards the house.  
  
  
Irene curses as she hears footsteps. Both from inside and outside the house. Her hand's been tipped, and she leans a shoulder against the door to force it further open as she fumbles for the pistol at her back.  
  
It is three, maybe four heartbeats before she sees Osesina rushing in, his expression twisted with determination and anger. He's fast, faster than she expects, and Irene ducks, aiming low as she attempts to dive past him back towards the front door, with the presence of mind to leave the back way clear for Sherlock.  
  
It doesn't work out quite as she plans as she feels a sharp, painful tug on her hair, and whipcord fingers close on her arm.  
  
  
Sherlock stumbles as he gets to the door, and he wrenches it open, ignoring the sharp protest of pain in his shoulder as it gives way. Osesina has his hand in the Woman's hair, and his hand around her arm. Images of the police reports, the things done to the women on this island in the past flit in his mind, and he's not going to let her be next. He is  _not_ .  
  
He rushes forward, garrote out, and lunges to get the loop over Osesina's head. Osesina struggles, and the loop only goes over his forehead before Sherlock pulls back, tugging his head backwards but not getting purchase around his throat.  
  
"Woman,  _run_ !" he shouts.  
  
  
The sudden attack from behind forces Osesina to let go of her hair to defend himself, and, for the first time since walking into the jungle, Irene feels a cold twinge of fear run down her spine. She struggles to break his grip on her arm, but despite his grunt of surprise, Osesina's grip doesn't slacken enough for her to break free.  
  
She manages to free the pistol from its hiding place at her back, but her leverage is poor and quarters are too close with all three of them to make firing it even an option.  
  
Instead, she slams the butt of the weapon into the back of Osesina's hand, hoping the shock will loosen his grip, and tries to sweep his feet out from under him at the same time.  
  
  
Sherlock pulls back, and Osesina slams his head backwards, hitting Sherlock squarely in the temple and disorienting him. He releases his grip on the garrote, and Osesina slams his shoulder back, hitting Sherlock in his injury. Sherlock cries out and stumbles, just missing falling over his own two feet.  
  
He moves forward again, throwing his good arm around Osesina's neck, trying to get him into a headlock and pull him away from the Woman.  
  
  
The attempt to get Osesina off his feet fails, but the blow to the back of the hand is successful, and Irene jerks her arm out of his grip just in time to see Sherlock stumble. She hesitates, her grip tightening on the pistol, and raises it to slam into Osesina's jaw when Sherlock recovers, throwing his arm around the other man's neck and blocking any attempt she could have made.  
  
She curses inwardly as Osesina grunts with the effort of breaking the headlock, and Irene knows she should run. But judging from the speed and strength of the man in question, she knows too that Sherlock is overmatched.  
  
So she stays, raising the pistol again, knowing she doesn't have a clear shot, but knowing she has to do  _something_ . And in the moment of hesitation, Osesina lunges forward. Whether he does it because he is aiming for her or because he is attempting to dislodge Sherlock at his back is uncertain. All Irene notices is a sharp wheezing pain as she is knocked to the ground, the breath driven momentarily out of her lungs.  
  
The pistol falls from her hands to the ground, and Osesina lunges for it.  
  
  
Sherlock tries to get a grip on Osesina, but he lunges forward, throwing Sherlock off. He stumbles, landing on his shoulder. He reaches out for the pistol, but Osesina slams his knee onto Sherlock's arm. He cries out in pain, and Osesina's fist aims for Sherlock's face.  
  
He takes the blow, and feels a wave of disorientation hit him again. He can't shake it off this time. He can only hope--- _idiotic_ word, hope---that the Woman can get to the pistol first.  
  
  
The struggle's kicked the pistol into a patch of gleaming sunlight pouring in from the open window, and Irene dives for it, telling herself that the cry of pain from Sherlock is a  _good_ thing, that he is conscious enough to be in pain, as opposed to... Well, that wasn't worth thinking about at the moment.  
  
She's moving too slowly, still struggling to draw breath as she gets her legs under her, and Osesina scrambles for it, reaching it a step ahead of her. He's moving too quickly and her body protests, trying to change direction, to avoid it as he raises the weapon, his eyes meeting hers and a snarl of a smile on his face.  
  
The first shot is extraordinarily loud, and she feels blinded as she stumbles into the light. There's a second shot, maybe a third, but they re quieter, perhaps they're merely echoes, ringing in her ears...  
  
The pistol is back on the ground, suddenly out of Osesina's grip and she reaches for it, but something is wrong, her legs suddenly unresponsive, and the ground beneath her growing slick.  
  
She doesn't notice the blood that begins to run from the wound that has blossomed on her thigh.  


  
  
Sherlock shakes his head and watches, eyes burning, as Osesina grabs the pistol and points it at the Woman. She's become a problem, but he isn't aiming for her head, he's aiming for her belly. To shoot her, to incapacitate her. The gunfire is deafening, and he sees her leg jerk with the sudden force of a bullet being embedded in it. Sherlock grips the garrote and feels anger forcing his muscles into action. He will kill Osesina before he kills the Woman. He will kill him. He will---  
  
There's another gunshot. It's quieter, sharper. Sherlock knows that sound. It comes from a distance and is aimed with absolute precision. Osesina takes it to the chest, and another sounds out, hitting him again. The man drops, dark eyes wide and vacant. There are two perfectly round holes in the grimy windows of the house.  
  
Sherlock spins his head around, but he doesn't see the assassin who just killed him. The gunshot is familiar, the sound is unmistakable.  _Moran._   
  
Sherlock half-crawls over to the Woman and presses his hand to her leg. Blood is pouring out profusely from the wound.  
  
"Woman," he says. " _Woman_ !"  
  
  
It takes seconds for her to realize the reason the gun had fallen to the ground is that Osesina has fallen. And even longer to realize that the noise she hears is Sherlock calling for her.  
  
But she does notice, immediately, when his hand presses against her leg, triggering the response of every nerve in the torn, bleeding muscles of her leg, and she  _screams_ , unthinkingly, instinctively, for a moment before she catches herself and turns away from Osesina's body towards her own, towards the blood and the hand pressed over the wound.  
  
It's all she manages to bite down on her tongue to keep from crying out again.  
  
  
The scream terrifies him. He crouches over her, petrified by the sound. He instinctively releases her leg, which causes it to bleed more profusely. His hand goes back down to her leg and he presses down.  
  
"It's going to be all right," he says. He reaches up and grabs the towel hanging over the edge of the oven, moving to tie it onto her leg.  
  
Except Moran is out there. With his weapon. And with Moran out there, he doesn't know if the Woman is safe. Sherlock doesn't care. He has to stop this bleeding.  
  
  
The release of pressure doesn't stop the pain, and she has to fight to breathe through it, with every breath she forces herself to focus, to think through the pain, to keep it from becoming absolutely blinding, to keep the scream swallowed down and the panic from bubbling up. Osesina's dead; she doesn't understand how at the moment, but it's obvious from the way he stares wide-eyed and vacant.  
  
"He has to have tape, restraints, supplies for his victims," she manages to grind out, teeth clenched against another cry of pain. She reaches over to assist as best she can, gasping as she applies pressure on the towel he tries to tie around her leg. "They may work better."  
  
  
"I have to get you to the lorry," he says. "We don't have time."  
  
How far to the medical building? Twenty minutes? She's bleeding too heavily.  
  
Once he's tied the towel, he reaches over and grabs his improvised garrote, slipping it around her leg and upwards around the towel. He pulls tight. He looks back up to the window, to the small holes in the glass. No more gunfire. No sign that Moran is going to kill him, too.  
  
But why? Why, when he had nearly killed Sherlock once before was it not important to kill him now? Small favors. He tucks the metal wire under itself to hold it in place and reaches over to the dead man's hand to retrieve the gun.  
  
  
She should argue. Under any other circumstance she would. Would tell him he is being irrational, that he is being stubborn, that  _clearly_ the best thing to do would be to get stabilized, to bandage up as best as she can before they tromp through the jungle again.  
  
But the sight of quite so much of her own blood, the pain of the gunshot wound, and the cold knowledge that is seeping in that she had underestimated the threat that Osesina had been... She'd never admit it terrifies her.  
  
She winces as he pulls the garrote tight, and adjusts it such that it isn't tight enough to cut off blood flow completely. She'd rather not lose the leg, all things considered, but pressure is necessary.  
  
A nod, then a pause. "I can't walk like this," she admits.  
  
  
"No," he says. "You'll need to put your arm around me."  
  
She's admitting she can't do something. He stills his expression completely, or as best as he absolutely can, to keep the fear from appearing there. She isn't arguing, isn't demanding that she's right, and she's admitting she can't walk. The word 'serious' comes to mind.  
  
Adrenaline is coursing through his veins, and he tells himself he can't feel the pain in his shoulder. His pain, her losing blood. He won't see the world without Irene Adler.  
  
  
Everything  _hurts_ , and it is the knowledge that this is a pain that has no obvious and immediate end that makes it different. Scope and magnitude, as well, but it is the uncertainty of its duration that makes it vastly different. Her presses her lips together in a thin, bloodless line as she nods, trying to get her unwounded leg under her before she reaches for him.  
  
But even with the care she attempts to take, her entire perception tunnels to the pain that rips through her entire body as she tries to move, tries to put an arm around his uninjured shoulder, and try as she may, she doesn't manage to swallow back the entire scream, though she manages to suppress it to short, ragged cries as she pulls herself upright against him.  
  
She can feel herself shaking with the effort to do that much, and forces herself not to think of the trail through the jungle, and concentrate only on the single step ahead.  
  
"Who--?"  
  
  
"Moran," Sherlock replies. He hadn't actually considered lying to her, which he finds surprising. He held back about the things that Osesina had done, held back about how much knowledge he had about Jim's web, and even held back about how badly his shoulder was hurt. But in this instant? Lying is the last thing on his mind.  
  
She cries out and it's a surprising and raw sound, especially coming from someone as self-contained as the Woman.  
  
"Hold onto me," he says.  
  
He considers the hike through the jungle. With only his shoulder to worry about, it was still a miserable hike. Now, carrying her, and the whole hike uphill, it was going to be far, far more awful. And there is no other way.  
  
  
She does, because she  _can't_ walk on her own, because holding onto him is the only thing she can do at this moment and even that will begin to be suspect.  
  
And even the first step, holding onto him, knowing he's taking as much of her weight as possible, the first step is still agony as she moves damaged muscles that would much rather not be moved. A terse nod, and a second step before the pain of the first has ebbed.  
  
"We should hurry."  
  
  


"Yes, you know, I am aware," he snaps. Perhaps this is a ploy for her to argue with him, to show him that she's not as badly injured as he thinks she is. She's paler than before, and that could be the pain, but it could also be the blood loss.  
  
He looks down at Osesina. All in all, it was far too easy a death, in Sherlock's opinion. And if the Woman dies---  
  
No. No, she will not die.  
  
He pushes open the door and looks outside. No sign of Moran. No sound from the jungle. No sound at all, if Sherlock is honest, apart from the blood rushing through his ears. But Moran is out there, and there's no doubt he's watching. Sherlock points the gun skyward and fires off two rounds. Birds fly out of the trees, but there is no response from Moran.  
  
"Let's go."  
  
  
Arguing with him would be an immensely preferably distraction at the moment, but it takes most of her focus to keep walking, to balance and limp along on one leg and to try not to lean too heavily against him as they make their painfully slow way out of the gate. She manages, however, a small grim laugh as the birds scatter in the wake of the additional gunshots.  
  
"Somehow I doubt the police will be quite as accommodating to that call as they were back in London."  
  
Another dozen steps, and her grip tightens fractionally, as she focuses on breathing regularly, on forcing herself not to tremble.  
  
  
"I don't think it's possible to be less accommodating than not at all," Sherlock replies. "I assume you saw the video that Lestrade uploaded."  
  
He doesn't care anymore about that. He just cares that her grip is a little tighter, and that his arm is already tired. He's tired. Physically, he's exhausted. The walk, the fight, the fact that he's still recovering from his injury. But the Woman is bleeding, she is bleeding very badly. Too badly. He can and will not let his current transport (his body, that is) give out on them now.  
  
They near the gate and he swings it out of the way, wincing at the movement with his bad arm.  
  
"Put your arm around my neck," he instructs. "I'm going to carry you over this."  
  
  
"It was better in person," she answers. Forced levity, that, but it was that or say nothing at all and focus on how much pain she is in and how far they will have to go.  
  
She looks at the gate, gauging the movements that would be necessary, and takes a deep breath to steel herself. Without another word of argument, she nods and wraps her arm around his neck, doing the best she can to keep clear of his shoulder.  
  
Her rate of survival would, after all, be lessened if  _he_ passed out.  
  
She sets her jaw, and refuses to make a sound, despite knowing what is coming. "Which one of us are you trying to distract with conversation?"  
  
  
"Oh, probably both of us," he says with a sigh. "I just can't have you overthinking the number of spiders in there."  
  
He's not one for affectionate gestures, but as she wraps her arms around his neck, he leans forward and presses a kiss to her temple.  
  
"Try not to scream," he says, softly.  
  
She holds onto him, and he hooks his good arm under her leg, letting her weight be held there, against his chest. She's positioned herself in a way that keeps her off of his shoulder, but he does need that hand in order to balance her. It's far from comfortable, but she's light. Very light.  
  
  
He is positively gentle, and the kiss pressed to her temple simply reinforces that fact. Even in her current, pain fogged and fear-drunk state of mind, she realizes it. She tries not to think of how dire their situation must be to prompt him to such extremes.  
  
It becomes far easier not to think of it when he moves her, and every thought becomes agony. Her grip around his neck tightens, and Irene grits her teeth, refusing to let a sound escape even as the motion jars every muscle, every nerve and seems to send fire and ice through every fiber of her being.  
  
It's enough to bring tears to her eyes as she forces herself to breath.  
  
The elevation, however, at least slows the bleeding a bit.  
  
"I hadn't even thought of the spiders until you brought it up," she eventually manages, her voice ragged.  
  
  
Her voice sounds ragged, and he can feel the tension in her jaw and body in the way she presses herself against him. Tight is better than loose, he tells himself. She still has the strength to hold herself together.  
  
"Mycroft loved spiders when we were younger," he says. "Used to keep a collection of them in the house." This is something John does. John will talk while someone is injured, give them stories that are inconsequential but may invoke some interest. Sherlock never talks about his childhood, and perhaps that will be enough to keep the Woman interested in this and not thinking about her pain.  
  
That is, if she's the one he's trying to distract with conversation. He steps onto the worn path and almost immediately puts his foot into the hill of fire ants that the Woman had nearly stepped in earlier. He swears and kicks, but opts to just move forward rather than worry about them.  
  
  
She says nothing for a long moment, barely even reacting when he swears and kicks at... probably those damnable ants. She's trying to find a rhythm, something to focus on besides the fact that she is bleeding messily from a gunshot wound in the jungle now that she isn't focusing on the need to take steps. But there is nothing besides breathing and the sound of  _his_ footsteps, neither of which are proper distractions, nothing except the conversation.  
  
Eventually she speaks again, though it is a pale imitation of her usual arch amusement, her voice brittle. "Please tell me they were live and you would set them free indoors."  
  
  
"Of course they were live," Sherlock says. "But some of them were very expensive and extremely dangerous if they made it out of his room." He finds himself smirking. "So I purchased an iguana and  _then_ let them loose."  
  
He nearly slips up as he steps on a piece of sandstone that crumbles under his feet. His shoulder aches, and the Woman's leg is bleeding heavily again. No time to tighten the makeshift tourniquet. He just keeps thinking about the next step forward. Once they're off this damnable trail, then it's a downhill hike to the lorry and then---and then---  
  
Her voice is quieter, now. Too quiet.  
  
"Woman?"  
  
  
The rhythm of his footsteps lulls her, she thinks. Or perhaps it is the bloodloss and the shock finally catching up to her. Either way, it is another minute before she responds, though she doesn't stir her head from where it rests against his chest.  
  
"You never asked," she murmurs. "About the helicopter."  
  
  
The helicopter?  
  
It takes him a moment, and he remembers. "The one you flew?" he asks, ducking to avoid another banana spider. "In Hong Kong."  
  
Mentally, he is planning on telling John Watson that he was right. Mental stimulation does not work, because right now he is telling the Woman to  _wake up_ and  _be alert_ , and she is doing neither of those things.  
  
  
A jolt of pain as he ducks, the motion jarring her leg, but it isn't enough to pull her back to full consciousness. The body's coping mechanism, to keep the mind from going mad from too much pain coming from nerve receptors. Or it is bloodloss.  
  
"Mm, you must have wondered," she says, voice softer still. "Not really in my line of--"  
  
Her grip around his neck slackens, her hand falling boneless against his shoulder.  
  
  
"No, it isn't," he says. "I'm anticipating it has something to do with one of your clients---though, really, you'd be more likely to talk about a client. A lover, perhaps? Though I think anyone would be a fool to attempt to understand your heart, Woman."  
  
Her grip has gone slack. Her hand is relaxed on his shoulder. He can feel her breath, warm against his neck. She's still breathing. She's still alive. For now. Fear sits in his throat, hard and cold like he's choking on a piece of ice. He continues talking and walking up, through the remainder of the miserable jungle. His footsteps are faster, though.  
  
He refuses to think that she's going to die. Despite the fact that her body is still expelling blood, the fact that they're on an island that doesn't have nearly enough sanitation or healthcare to take care of the injury. She  _can not_ die. Losing her would mean losing a piece of himself. Completely, utterly. Forever.  
  
He breaks through the jungle to the steep decline of the road. He can see a group of students walking towards him, and he calls out to them. Anything. Help. One of them starts towards him. He recognizes her immediately. The girl from before, the one who was smitten with the strange professor that kept watching him. Sherlock starts, pulling the Woman closer to him protectively. Osesina's man?  
  
The older professor steps forward, as well as the rest of the students. He gestures to a few of the stronger assistants to take her. Sherlock holds onto her, despite how very obviously illogical it is. He can't carry her the rest of the way, he knows this. But he remembers the gun, the one tucked in the back of his trousers. The same one that shot the Woman. How easy it could be for Osesina's man to put the blame on him for the Woman's state. Or, how easy it could be to put the man down, to get him out of the way so that the Woman can be taken somewhere safely.  
  
"Let her go, Mr. Holmes," the old professor says.  
  
So he does know what Sherlock's name is. His real name. He leans the Woman against his shoulder and slips his hand back. This is a good idea. An idea that's worth it. Her life for Sherlock's. He thinks, he's not  _thinking_ right now. He's  _feeling_ . He's being sentimental. He doesn't care.  
  
The old professor reaches into his pocket and produces a leather billfold. He opens it up, and a slightly tarnished badge shines in the light.  
  
"My name is Quinn Fawcett," the man says. Sherlock's eyebrows knit together. He doesn't know that name, but he has the feeling he's supposed to. "I imagine you've worked out that I'm not strictly a professor here."  
  
One of the students takes the Woman's arm, the other moves to take her legs. Sherlock wasn't aware he'd let her go.  
  
Fawcett nods. "I work for your brother. Mycroft Holmes." 


	18. Government Interference

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Irene Adler unconscious from shock and bloodloss due to a bullet wound to the thigh, Sherlock Holmes finds himself about to make a decision that will cost him both his pride and perhaps his freedom to keep her alive.

"She is not dead."  
  
This is what Sherlock Holmes says over the phone as he sits in the pitiful excuse for a hospital in San Salvador. The Woman, again Mrs. Norton, was now here.  
  
It had been a journey to get to this place. First, there was the drive to the small medical facility in San Salvador. The facility could determine that the Woman was alive, but her blood loss was severe. The facility could also determine that she was A+ in blood type, which was not a terribly rare blood type, but one they did not have in stock in their facility. They could also determine that the amount of opiate based drugs and chance of infection meant that Sherlock, universally able to donate with his O+ blood, would not be able to give his blood to her. A phone call was made, and five minutes later, the shop owner, the one the Woman had been idly chatting with, was sitting across from the Woman's bed, donating her blood into a plastic bag, tears in her eyes.  
  
It is still strange, to Sherlock, how quickly the Woman managed to acquire this shopkeeper's affection. There was no question that she would donate her blood, no question that she would return if it was not enough. To Sherlock, such a sacrifice was only for someone of extreme significance to him, someone whose death would affect him, the way that the Woman's might.  
  
Sherlock paced. Sherlock paced, and waited and waited and cursed everything he possibly could before he took the phone offered to him by Mr. Fawcett.  
  
"Neither, it appears, are you." Mycroft's voice is cold on the other end of the phone. Sherlock would have preferred to text, but considering the circumstances, he would rather have Mycroft listening than ignoring a request.  
  
Two promises are made, and within a half hour, a helicopter lands outside of the small medical center, ready to take the Woman to Nassau for surgery.  
  
"There may only be enough room for one," Mycroft says. "Is separation a problem?"  
  
This question is not as simple as it first appears, but such is _always_ the way with Mycroft Holmes. He is determining the level of affection Sherlock has for the Woman, determining how much it matters. It would almost be a pitiful attempt, except Sherlock knows his brother. He knows he's saying this _because_ Sherlock will recognize the ploy, he'll recognize what it is. The response when he knows he's on the spot is what matters.  
  
He takes a breath. Considers the Woman. He can leave her alone, he knows this. But can he leave her alone with Mycroft's men?  
  
"Yes," he says, voice cold and certain.  
  
He can hear Mycroft's careful nod. "We will make the arrangements for one more on the helicopter." There is a pause, and Mycroft's smirk is _felt_ , even from the extreme distance. "See you very soon."  
  
Sherlock only thinks briefly of the things left behind in the room. The clothing and the jewelry. Hardly important, he decides. He passes a note to the shopkeeper as he follows the gurney with the Woman on it to the helicopter. There is no need to play the worried husband. _Playing_ implies he has enough room in his mind to play at all. He sits, silent, next to the A &E worker and Fawcett, his hand on the edge of the Woman's small, made-up gurney on the helicopter. He doesn't touch her wrist, doesn't think he wants to know how slow her pulse would be right now.  
  
The helicopter begins its ascent.   
  
  
Sound occasionally filtered through, snatches of conversation, murmurs and whispers and crisp words catching her drifting consciousness. She is not coherent enough to understand the words, but it is enough that a part of her recognizes that she is not alone.  
  
They've stabilized her as best they can, and the transfusion helps immensely, but her vitals are still too weak for drugs, especially with surgery on the horizon and the promise of anesthesia there. So when Irene stirs back to consciousness, she is aware of pain, but also aware of how much _less_ pain there was than before she'd blacked out. She blinks slowly, and there is no relentless tropical sun above her, no scent of salt in the air, just the harsh bite of antiseptic. There is a persistent whirling sound in her ears, and the world around her seems to move.  
  
She, on the other hand, can't seem to manage to move at all, except for a small twitch of the fingers, when what she wants to do is to sit up, look around.   
  
  
Sherlock is acutely aware of the moment the Woman blinks. Her fingertips move the gurney, and he reaches over her, grabbing one of the headsets on the wall, which he places over her ears. The A&E worker hadn't expected her to wake up, and thus she wouldn't need the communication that they might, though Sherlock had switched his frequency to one away from Fawcett and the pilot's inanity. He switches the Woman to his frequency.  
  
"It's all right," he says. It is as far from all right as he could imagine right now and he doesn't have the mental capacity to attempt to lie with any real aptitude. "Try not to move too much. We're in flight."   
  
  
It is more difficult than she would have thought possible to shake her head, but she manages, ever so slightly. Even tinny and transmitted, she can hear the tension in his voice, in the way he doesn't even bother to lie well. She frowns, brow furrowing as she works through the implications of his words. The persistent whirl in her ear had been the sound of a rotor turning, the strange ceiling now obviously the domed ceiling of a helicopter.  
  
She wets her lips to speak, but when she does her voice is exhausted, soft, perhaps too quiet to be picked up by the headset. Still, she expects even if he cannot hear her, he'd be able to read her lips and deduce the question. "Medical evacuation?"   
  
  
"Yes," he replies. Her voice is far too quiet, but he can read the slight movement of her mouth, work out what she's asking him. Obvious question, of course. She probably doesn't really need an answer.  
  
"We're flying back to Nassau. Hopefully briefly."  
  
He does not like the tightness in his chest. This feeling that despite everything, she's still very weak. The Woman is not supposed to be weak. She's intense, she's overwhelming in her _there_ ness. Even starved and injured in Hong Kong, she still attacked and drove him mad. This makes him _afraid_. He does not like feeling afraid. He does not like feeling at all.  
  
"I would like you to be very aware of how cross I am at your inability to remain silent back at Osesina's home," he says. This, too, is not said with much emotion. It's more for show than it is to actually depict actual crossness.   
  
  
She despises being weak, despises feeling out of control, and the situation is both of those things. But she doesn't have enough strength at the moment to do anything more strenuous than simply being conscious. She can't even muster up proper annoyance.  
  
Which, of course, simply meant once she _was_ back on her feet she'd be supremely irritated by this lapse.  
  
At the moment, all she manages is the barest twitch at the corner of her mouth, the faintest echo of a smile at his words. "I'll keep that in mind the next time I decide to cross paths with a bullet."   
  
  
"And next time, don't let's have it happen on an island where a majority of the population can't donate their blood to you," he says. "That gossiping friend of yours is apparently a rarity."  
  
He touches her hand. Not her pulse, no. No, he doesn't want to feel that. But he wants that connection, even if it's just for a moment. Even as he's informing himself that he can not, and _should not_ allow himself this connection again. He can't let this stop him from what he's doing. He can't let himself give in, simply disappear with her. There is too much at stake and he---  
  
The helicopter takes a turn and he finds his grip on her hand gets the slightest bit tighter. Not that he's afraid.   
  
  
Her fingers close around his hand instinctively, as if seeking the connection, the warm solidity. Her touch is cool with the lowered volume of blood in her system, and her grip is nowhere near as strong as it had been just a day ago, when her fingers had twined with his in a tiny two bed room in San Salvador. The familiar weight of the amethyst ring is gone from her finger, but she is there, and so is he, and in this moment, it matters.  
  
Her brow furrows at his words, and she tries to glance around, catching sight in her periphery of the others in the helicopter. "Medical evacuations draw attention. This is dangerous."  
  
He shouldn't be here, she leaves unspoken. But she doesn't let go.   
  
  
He reads the word 'attention' and 'dangerous' more clearly than anything on her lips. He nods and looks over to Fawcett and the A&E worker, who have noticed that they are speaking and are, apparently, unsure why they can't hear them. Or perhaps they're simply trying to read their lips. Mycroft has never been good at picking assistants. Even that Anthea woman was far from his most brilliant selection.  
  
"I spoke to my brother," he says. "He'll keep us both under the radar until you're out of surgery." He's annoyed by how oddly defeated his voice sounds.   
  
  
She will realize the import of his answer later, realize the full weight of what it meant for this holiday from death, for her own plans, for his, now that Mycroft Holmes (and by definition the British government) knew they were both still alive. She will realize it, eventually, perhaps as the last traces of anesthetic works its way out of her bloodstream, perhaps after. Later, she will realize it and realize it has changed things, and possibly mourn the loss in some part of herself that she will not acknowledge exists.  
  
But for now, her answer is immediate, and far more complicated than the two simple words would imply.  
  
"And after?"   
  
  
"For you, nothing," he says. "I've had him absolve you of whatever debt he feels the nation is owed. For his part, I don't think he was entirely surprised. Apparently some inconsistencies in my plan for myself had him realize some of the problems back in Karachi."  
  
His response is deliberately avoiding her actual question. This is, he decides, partially because of his concern for her health, that he doesn't want her to worry. And partially because admitting it aloud means admitting it is actually going to happen. He does not want that.   
  
  
Her grip is still weak, but it tightens noticeably against his hand at his answer. She is weak and in pain, but her mind isn't _impaired_ and she recognizes his avoidance.  
  
"Lying to a dying woman's hardly chivalrous, Mr. Holmes."   
  
  
"You're not dying," Sherlock snaps. His voice is only somewhat strained, a mere hiccup from the rest of his vocal intonations, but he imagines that, to the Woman, it is more than slightly telling.   
  
  
The headset damps out much of the noise, flattens the sound of his voice in her ear, but still she hears the snap in his voice, or at the very least imagines she can hear it, because his answer is too quick, his demeanor too insistent, for anything else.  
  
Another bare twitch of her lips, the ghost of another faint, wry smile. She doesn't bother pointing out that surgery is inherently risky, or that she is here at the sufferance of Mycroft Holmes, who no doubt slept better thinking she were dead. Or that the two together led to a higher likelihood of the former.  
  
Perhaps she was more impaired than she'd like to admit, or it is in fact utter sentiment without the strength of will to couch it in something else, but it seems at the moment imperative to know.  
  
"What did you promise in exchange?"   
  
  
He looks away from her, out to the side of the helicopter, where he can see the bright blue of the water. The Woman isn't an idiot, that's why she's garnered his affection. His sentiment. Of course she'd recognize that there was a price for this. Mycroft Holmes would've done anything requested for his brother, but the Woman is not part of his world of importance. It's why he let her go.  
  
"Nothing I can't complete," he says, simply. It's nothing he wants to do, but when it comes down to it, in this case? _Want_ is irrelevant.  
  
A lot of things are irrelevant.  
  
"Moran would've seen you injured," he says. "He's aware we're going back to Nassau."   
  
  
He is maddening. But then that had always been part of the appeal, part of what draws them back together. Even now, he evades and she wants to know.  
  
"Moran's irrelevant." For the moment. The fact that he had been there, had been the one to take down Osesina was incredibly relevant, as far as Irene was concerned, but that was something to be thought of later. A later that is already changing, that she needs to think through.  
  
"Back to Baker Street, then?" She should let go of his hand, she thinks, because this is logically the end of whatever strange holiday, courtship, game they've caught themselves in. Logically, with his resurrection would come all the trappings of Sherlock Holmes again, especially if the elder Holmes had a hand in it.  
  
She should let go, should disentangle herself from him before the anesthesia can fog her thoughts and make her able to think less clearly (though how clearly is she thinking now, full of sentiment, even asking the question).  
  
She should, but she doesn't.   
  
  
"Eventually," he replies. "He knows as well as I do that even with all of his protection, Jim's targets are still in danger so long as his web is active."  
  
And as for the Woman---  
  
Sherlock did not want to tell her what Mycroft probably planned up for her. He imagined Mycroft was too logical to blame her, but that didn't mean he wouldn't punish her. Punish her, because he couldn't punish his brother, not after what he did.  
  
"Active without someone controlling it," he amends.   
  
  
She studies him intently at the answer he gives, as if she is looking for something in his expression, something more than his words. She has heard the unspoken implication as clearly as the spoken one, but that isn't what makes the minute tension seem to leech out of grip.  
  
"This might be the first time your brother and I have ever agreed on anything," is all she says. The helicopter shifts, hitting an air pocket or a thermal, and the pilot adjusts sharply.  
  
She frowns at the motion. "And the pilot's an idiot."   
  
  
"More incompetent than his usual," Sherlock agrees. He looks up at the doorway to where the pilots sit, at the smudge of dark brown mud on the door and the slight indent in the metal.  
  
Wait.  
  
Sherlock's grip on the Woman's hand is just the slightest bit tighter.  
  
"Do you know the unique nature of the sand on San Salvador?" he says. "It's calcium carbonate. From the reef below the island. The whole island is made up of it. It's what makes the sand so fine and white."   
  
  
She recognizes his expression, the gleam of razor sharp focus that practically screams he's noticed something. Something out of her field of vision, and her first instinct is to move so that she can.  
  
Which was, in hindsight, a terrible idea, as she takes a sharp breath inward and remains still again. The medic notices and reaches for her, and Irene glares, futilely, in response.   
  
"You've got a distinct advantage over me at the moment on things like the nature of sand particulates."   
  
  
The glare that the Woman gives the medic makes Sherlock feel somewhat more confident. She is not dead, she _will not_ die.  
  
He reaches over to her headset and switches the frequency as he switches his own. The indistinct chatter of the others on the helicopter fills his ears. Discussing the weather, discussing landing in Nassau. Seeing but not observing.  
  
"What is the name of our pilot?" Sherlock demands. The other men look at him, startled at his sudden ability to talk.  
  
"Marcus," Fawcett says.  
  
"Has he spoke through the headset yet?"  
  
The men blink at him. 


	19. Hijacked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A simple medical evacuation goes awry and the question of just what price Sherlock Holmes has paid to ensure Irene's safety is suddenly irrelevant...

She'd have enjoyed the uniform looks of surprise on the two men's faces if she wasn't completely blind to what it was Sherlock had seen. As things stand, she is irritated by the fact that she is effectively immobile, and the fear that had faded with unconsciousness and new-found relative safety slides up her spine like a breath of ice.  
  
Her grip on his hand tightens. "So no. What is it?"   
  
  
"I don't think we're going to Nassau," Sherlock says.  
  
If their attendant isn't who they expect, who is it? Sherlock's first thought is of Moran, who was also on the island. But he's not one to take control like this, he'll fire from a distance. So who?  
  
"You're armed," he says to Fawcett. "Be prepared. He can hear us after all."   
  
  
She, on the other hand, is defenseless, and it  _galls_ Irene Adler to be defenseless, to be powerless and unable to act. Her mind races, works through his thought process backwards.  _Calcium carbonate. Fine white sand._ His look towards the pilot, the angle of his gaze meant he'd seen something near the floor.   
  
Irene cranes her head, mentally cursing the gurney and the fact that it restricts her vision and the fact that her body is resisting all movement. She notices the A&E medic is calm now, his initial surprise fading into placidity, and that there is mud on his shoe, dark and loamy.  
  
She forces her expression to stillness, back to a careful exhaustion, and her fingertips tap against Sherlock's hand.  
  
\- .... . / -- . -.. .. -.-. / - --- ---   
  
  
_The / Medic / Too._   
  
Her mind is sharp, even considering the danger her life is in. Considering he doesn't know where they're going or why---not yet---he has to find some sort of solace in that. She's  _there_ enough for now. But it won't be that way for long.  
  
The medic, however, the medic changes things. Sherlock almost didn't get on this helicopter, but the medic wasn't going anywhere.  
  
His response is tapped on her hand as he drums his fingertips along his lips, as though in thought.  
  
.. - .. ... -.-- --- ..- - .... . -.-- .-- .- -. - .-.-.-   
  
  
_It is you they want_ .   
It takes her a few seconds longer than it should to translate, but no time at all to respond.  
  
..-. .-.. .- - - . .-. . -..   
  
The professor—no, Mycroft Holmes' man—is tension taut, his hand hovering over his weapon uncertainly as he looks towards the pilot in question, and Irene wonders how he can see so  _little_ . There is no way to alert him to the medic without giving away anything, but it explains the reason why the man flying the helicopter remained poised despite the fact that he could hear them.  
  
"Not your brother's man then?" she asks, expecting he'll recognize that she isn't talking about just the pilot. "Sloppy wor--"  
  
She feigns a coughing fit that nearly doubles her over. It hurts, but it also catches the A&E medic's attention.   
  
  
_Flattered_ . Of course she is.  
  
There were several options now. He could tackle the A&E medic, which would mean getting the immediate danger out of the way, but it also meant that the helicopter pilot was still in control, and a fight within the helicopter was a dangerous one. Too much risk to the Woman.  
  
He looks over the medic's bag. Lots of medications, painkillers---ah, but then he sees it. Haldol. Antipsychotic, but also a tranquilizer. Pre-prepared in syringes, as well. There was no way to administer it to the medic, not without Fawcett being alerted. But the Woman, she could. With the right diversion.  
  
He unsnaps his belt and half-climbs up, towards her.  
  
"Is she all right?" he demands, his voice now full of false worry. " _Is she all right_ ?" His hand curls around the syringe.   
  
  
There is absolutely no need to feign the breathless gasp that comes after the false coughing, not when pain like a burning brand lances straight up her spine, robbing her of air, at having moved.  
  
No doubt he'd tell her it was her own fault for refusing to stay still.   
  
The medic reaches for her, still playing the part, and Irene feels Sherlock's hand pull away, then press something into hers. She does not look down, too busy playing (being) the hurt patient struggling to breath, but it is obvious what he's palmed her.  
  
But the medic needs to be closer before she can reach him.   
  
She wheezes as she tries to draw a breath, and it is not an act.   
  
  
Sherlock hovers, and he knows without a doubt that Mycroft's man is watching him. Watching him, not watching the Woman. Waiting to see what Sherlock will do.  
  
He wants to make this act believable, but when the Woman wheezes, the false worry drops from his face, replaced by a more subdued concern. Real concern. She's moving too much. No matter how effective this could be, it still means that she's moving, that she could potentially open the temporary sutures on her leg ( _in_ her leg, his brain promptly reminds him. Holding closed a vein.)  
  
He turns back to Mycroft's man.  
  
"You're worrying about the wrong person," he says, gesturing to the door.  
  
Fawcett turns to look.   
  
  
She manages the briefest smile as the man in question turns before she bites down hard on her lower lip and reaches for the medic, imbedding the syringe deep into the muscle of his leg and plunging whatever drug is within said syringe into his system. The fact that she didn't ask, that it doesn't even  _occur_ to her to wonder what exactly is in said syringe until she's already flooded his system with it, well, that probably isn't what ordinary people did.  
  
But then, she isn't ordinary.  
  
She falls back, letting the syringe drop, tasting blood from where she'd bitten too deep, and tries to breathe.  
  
Still, she gives Sherlock a look of mingled annoyance and affection. "Always subtle, aren't you?"   
  
  
The syringe drops, but so does the medic, and Sherlock turns to look back at him, stunned as he falls back down, eyes rolling up in his head. Fawcett undoes himself and starts to head over to the medic, while Sherlock steps back to the Woman, kicking the syringe under the seats as he does so.  
  
"Wherever he's taking us, I'll get you to the hospital," he says quietly to her.  
  
It's a silly thing, promising this to her. Perhaps he's simply promising it to himself.   
  
  
She closes her eyes, though it is really a futile gesture. Blocking out one set of stimuli simply made the other more acute. But it helps, a little, to breathe, to stop trying to move. It helps too, to hear his voice, to hear the quiet promise that ignores the fact that wherever they are headed may not even  _have_ a hospital.  
  
Sentimental, that, but it helps.  
  
Some little bit of tension eases from her. That too, is pointless, to not worry when they are in an apparently hijacked helicopter and she is in somewhat dire need of actual medical attention.   
  
"Don't make promises, Sherlock. I may hold you to them."   
  
  
He smiles, just a little. Just for a moment.  
  
"I did promise you the tropics, remember?"   
  
  
A smile at that. "I could have done without the ants."  
  
She is silent for a long moment, listening to the noise of the rotor, thinking, ignoring the throb of pain in her leg. There had been a syringe of tranquilizer in the medical supplies. Logically, there should be a second, a backup.   
  
She remains aware of the headset, of the pilot's ability to hear them, so instead does not speak, instead simply forming the words and trusting he could and would read her lips, or at least deduce the question.  
  
_Can Mycroft's man pilot a helicopter?_   
  
  
Sherlock turns his head to look at the men, fussing over the medic. He looks at his arm, at his hands, and turns back to the Woman, shaking his head.  
  
They would need someone to pilot the helicopter. Sherlock's knowledge of flying is rudimentary, based off of watching the Woman pilot out of Hong Kong. It was  _something_ , but not nearly enough.  
  
_Can you?_   
  
  
She rolls her eyes, and a look of pure, scathing annoyance crosses her face before fading to careful consideration. She thinks on it for a moment and draws a deep breath. It hurts to move, and no doubt the range of motion necessary was far more than the simple move needed to drug the medic. But... she thinks on the amount of time they've already been flying. And the helicopter's make would allow for an auto-gyrated landing if necessary  
  
A curt nod. And since she is certain the words give nothing away except the immense amount of pain the others no doubt believe she is in, she speaks, forcing authority and strength into her voice.   
  
"Give me the painkillers."   
  
  
Sherlock nods, and turns back just long enough to headbutt Fawcett as he turns to question Sherlock. Fawcett drops.   
  
Sherlock turns back to the Woman and grabs another syringe. He unwraps it and forcibly ejects about half of the painkiller aside before moving to her leg. It looks bad. Very bad, even with the work done on it.  
  
"Breathe in," he instructs.   
  
  
She nearly objects when he ejects half of the syringe's contents, but after a moment admits that she needs to be lucid. "Can't be worse than anything so far," she answers with a thin smile as her grip on the side of the gurney tightens.  
  
She breathes in anyway, bracing herself.   
  
  
He knows a good bit about artery and vein placement, and he aims accordingly, hoping for immediate relief so she can move. He doesn't wince, doesn't express any of his internal fear of her pain.  
  
This, he's decided, is what real sentiment is about. Being afraid for someone else's pain.   
  
  
The injection barely registers, either because it is such a small additional pain compared to the rest or because of his skill with a needle. Perhaps both. But she counts silently and, before the count of five, she can feel the drug take effect, feel the persistent pain ebb to an indistinct, nebulous knowledge at the back of her mind. The simple cessation of it is such a pleasure that Irene goes boneless with relief, nearly sighing and only catching herself when she realizes that it would give away their advantage.  
  
She gives herself another count of five, then reaches up and switches the frequency on her headset to the one they'd used before, gesturing for him to do the same as she cautiously pulls herself to a sitting position.  
  
"If anything happens, the helicopter can land itself. Use the pedals to steer," she instructs. She has to tell him, just in case.   
  
  
He follows suit, changing the frequencies.  
  
His expression is mildly confused for a moment. If anything happens. What could happen? Nothing, nothing could possibly happen. He informs himself of this because any other thought is---well, it's completely unthinkable. He steps over to Fawcett and takes his gun.  
  
"I'm going to pull him out of position, so you'll need to move fairly quickly," he says. He imagines that just shooting the person acting as pilot is the worst possible idea right now. The last thing they need is anything resembling de-pressuring of the front of the helicopter while the Woman is like this.  
  
He takes a breath and puts his hand on the door, looking to her for one moment, making certain she's ready. She looks pale. Pain is probably better, but she needs to have her leg  _repaired_ and blood  _restored_ . This is the only way to make certain.   
  
  
'Ready' is a matter of perspectives. She steels herself and carefully rises, keeping her expression utterly blank as she does so. The pain isn't gone, not completely, and she remains painfully aware that one unthinking step could change that.  
  
She steadies herself, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line, and nods. "I'll make it," she reassures him. Or herself. Hard to tell which of them that's for, though when she pauses and eventually adds, "Be careful," that was purely for her own peace of mind.   
  
  
He nods, takes a breath, and pulls open the door. First thing that is easily noticeable is that there is a corpse in the copilot's seat. Clearly deceased from at least six hours previous. Second thing, is that the pilot is armed. His gun is pointed at Sherlock, and a bar is holding the steering stick---Sherlock hasn't the faintest idea what the object itself is called---in place.  
  
Also, Sherlock has seen this man before. He has, in fact, fought with this man before. His last appearance was back on a very specific airplane on the way to Nassau.  
  
"Vincent Spaulding," Sherlock says. He keeps the gun level at him. "You're looking all better."   
  
  
It takes Irene a second to recognize the name, but when she does, things begin falling into place. Spaulding. The twins masquerading as a single woman. The diamonds. The remaining twin who had disappeared from Irene's attentions in Nassau...  
  
The Chinese girl she'd last seen in Hong Kong, glimpsed on the Nassau tarmac.  
  
Irene says nothing for the moment, as Spaulding scoffs. She switches back to the previous frequency on the headset just in time to catch his words.   
  
"So are you. Can't say the same about the bitch you're with though, can you?"   
  
  
"That's true," Sherlock agrees. "But the Woman here injected him with a whole syringe of morphine, so I don't expect him to be feeling anything at all for a while now."  
  
He looks at the man. "Same outfit as before, Vincent, though laundered. Twice. New mud on shoes, trousers. New blood on the knuckles. You haven't stopped moving since Nassau, have you? Two weeks. Must be one hell of a time to build a grudge."  
  
He adjusts the gun in his hands. "Focus it on me, not on her."   
  
  
Irene doesn't bother hiding a smile at his retort, though her eyes sweep over the interior of the helicopter. The medic's incapacitated. As is Mycroft's man. She wonders briefly it would have been better to not incapacitate Fawcett, but it was too late for that particular regret. They still, perhaps, had numbers on their side, though her own capabilities are less than ideal at the moment.  
  
The revelation of what's happened to his accomplice seems to make Spaulding nervous, and he bares his teeth in a sneer that looks more like a grimace. He shifts his weight, and the motion puts both Sherlock and Irene in his field of vision, even though his gun remains (for the moment) pointed at Sherlock.  
  
"How about you give me what I want. And we'll talk about what you want later."   
  
  
"Not your girlfriend, of course," Sherlock says. "She was only a means to an end. Which is all right, because her sister felt the same way when she planned to have you assassinated and stole the diamonds."  
  
He opens his eyes wider, as if suddenly realizing that the diamonds were the point. He'd known that all along, of course, but it's better to pretend that this is a sudden realization.  
  
"Oh, you think  _we_ have them. I see. No, they'd be with the purse, I think, left behind on the airplane---"  
  
"Not there," Vincent snaps.  
  
"Of course,' Sherlock says. "But you did check the police department? Customs? They are  _stolen_ , after all."   
  
  
Spaulding scoffs, and Irene resists the urge to lean against the bulkhead separating the cockpit from the rest of the interior. Spaulding shakes his head and gestures towards Irene with the gun in his hand.   
  
The faintest tremble of nerves in his voice. "I know she has them."   
  
  
"No," Sherlock says. "You're wrong. The only thing she has right now is a bullet wound to the leg that needs immediate medical attention. Wherever you're trying to take us isn't going to get you what you want."  
  
The Woman isn't doing well. Sherlock can tell that. This isn't going as quickly as he'd hoped, but he didn't expect the pilot to have a gun as well.  
  
"I'd offer to let you go through our things, but I'm afraid we've left everything behind."   
  
  
"So tell me where they are and you can go wherever you want." Spaulding's nerves are obvious, even to Irene who has far more on her mind than whether or not the desperate man with the gun is nervous or not.  
  
He draws a deep breath, though it doesn't keep his hands from trembling, and he points the gun directly at her. "Or she has two bullet wounds to take care of."  
  
It is not difficult to feign fear in response, as if she is genuinely afraid and convinced by his threat. "RBC Royal Bank, Deposit Box 4291," Irene answers. It's a bluff, of course. She'd sold the diamonds as soon as she'd left the hospital during Sherlock's recovery, but giving Spaulding the security deposit box of the banker who had sold them for her was as good a bluff as any.   
  
  
The moment that Vincent's eyes go off of Sherlock, he moves. Arm out, he brings his fist up, catching Spaulding's elbow with his hand as his other arm goes down on his wrist. The arm gives a satisfying  _snap_ , and Spaulding's gun falls to the ground. Spaulding cries out, and Sherlock grabs him, pulling him bodily from the pilot's seat and into the main cabin. His shoulder cries out at the struggle, but it's more important to get Spaulding away from control.  
  
Even injured, Spaulding is an intimidating man. He swings his good arm at Sherlock, and Sherlock throws his fist up to block, anticipating the obvious move. Then, perhaps fueled by pain or frustration, Spaulding shoves Sherlock backwards, into the Woman.  
  
Sherlock pulls himself up to fight again, when he immediately remembers the Woman's state. He turns back to look at her, and Spaulding grabs Sherlock into a headlock.   
  
  
The painkillers keep the worst of any new pain at bay, but when Sherlock stumbles into her, Irene feels her injured leg give way, and pulls herself back up by the bulkhead. "I'm fine,  _go_ ," she snaps, breathless, as she edges her way to the cockpit.  
  
She falls heavily into the pilot's seat, and wrenches the bar that had been wedged to the cyclic away. Irene hesitates for a moment, glancing back towards Sherlock grappling with Vincent Spaulding, and sets her jaw. Without another second of hesitance, she swings the cyclic laterally, sending the helicopter rolling sharply to its side.   
  
  
Sherlock's airways are blocked, but he sees the Woman pull herself up. He tries to get his shoulder up to get his airway open, but pain from his shoulder shoots up his arm. No. No, that isn't going to work. He's going to---  
  
And suddenly, the helicopter rolls, and Spaulding and Sherlock go tumbling backwards, with Sherlock on top. He throws a solid punch with his good arm, and again. And again. The helicopter side becomes a weapon, and Sherlock grips Spaulding's hair, slamming his head back.  
  
Spaulding goes limp.  
  
"Woman," he says. "You all right?"   
  
  
She brings the helicopter back to a level keel, focusing on the action rather than the breathing she is doing or the fact that a thin line of warmth seeps through the dressing covering her wound. She shifts, pressing the wound against the side of the pilot's chair, ostensibly to put pressure on it though the gestures hides the dressing as well.  
  
"I'll live," she answers curtly. "You and Spaulding?   
  
  
"He's unconscious," Sherlock replies. "I've torn a few of my stitches, but that's hardly anything. Apart from painful."  
  
He gets to his feet and heads over to Fawcett. As anticipated, Fawcett has a set of handcuffs in his pocket, which Sherlock attaches to Spaulding's good arm, and then to the seat.  
  
He heads back to the front of the helicopter and pulls on the body of the pilot, which he deposits onto the floor before climbing in next to the Woman. He shuts the door.  
  
"Better," he says. 


	20. From the Pilot's Seat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A simple hijacking is no match for the combined wit of Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, even if they are both impaired by injury and sentiment. But Nassau and Mycroft Holmes looms. Will they choose freedom over safety, or will cooler heads prevail?

Irene glances over her shoulder and offers him a quick, thin smile. "Just like old times," she answers.  
  
She gestures towards the instrumentation panel. "He was headed for the States, it looks like." A second glance. "I'm almost tempted to follow his route."   
  
  
Sherlock is also tempted. Very tempted. He looks at the instrumentation panel, trying to decipher exactly what it means, if they can follow it later. They could, in theory, follow it now. He wants to follow it now, but his eyes drift down to her leg, to her _state_ , and he thinks about the hospital in Nassau, waiting for her.  
  
He fishes out his mobile.  
  
"Any idea where?" he demands.   
  
  
She gives him a sidelong look, her eyes glancing first from his face to the mobile in his hand, and back again. She then turns pointedly away from him and returns her attention to the necessities of flight.   
  
"I can't be certain from this far out. Southern tip of Florida, I expect. Perhaps an island off the coast."   
  
  
It might've been worth it if he had any sort of idea what city. How close to Florida, whereabouts. An island might not have a medical facility she could go to while he found out what Spaulding was doing. He scowls internally and tucks the mobile away.  
  
"He's not worth it," he says, mostly as a way to appease himself for not following through. He glances back to her.  
  
"You're bleeding again." He knows she is probably very aware, but he wants her to know that he knows as well.   
  
  
He's not worth it. And the unspoken implication, the silences that defined what they were by what they weren't, said just as loudly that she was. Still, she is tempted, if not to follow Spaulding's course then to take the helicopter elsewhere than Nassau, where Mycroft Holmes and the past are waiting.  
  
Still, she manages a flicker of mild annoyance at his statement, despite her attempt to hide the extent of the renewed injury. He is stating the obvious because she knows, and he wants her to know that he does as well. Irritating, that.   
  
"And I'm flying a helicopter. And you'll be needing medical attention. Or are we done stating the obvious?"   
  
  
"I'm fine," he replies without hesitation. It's her he's concerned about. He can handle his own pain. Her annoyance isn't going to remove the concern.  
  
He looks outside, out over the water and sunlight ahead of them.  
  
"The Black Lotus, Moran, and now Spaulding," he says. "We have earned quite a few _fans_ since we started this holiday, Woman."   
  
  
The relentless drone of the rotor remains steady, filling the silence between them, and Irene guides the aircraft back towards Nassau. "We've left quite a few behind too," she replies. "The finance minister and the weapons collector in Kotor. The drug dealers in Hong Kong. Osesina. There's a man in Las Vegas jumping at his own shadow these days."  
  
The island appears as a pale speck on the horizon against the vivid blue sea. "Getting bored of being on holiday?"   
  
  
"Bored," he repeats, as if tasting the word. "No, Woman. I am _far_ from bored on this holiday."  
  
There's an end to it, of course. All holidays end. But he doesn't want this to be over just yet, even if it means his home in Baker Street can still only just be glanced at from a distance. Even more so now that Mycroft knows they're alive.  
  
"Are you?"   
  
  
Holidays end. Theirs moreso than most, because she knows they are unsustainable. The fact that they both need medical attention at the moment makes that abundantly clear. But... she wants this to last, just for a little while longer.   
  
"If I were bored, I wouldn't be tempted to take this plane to the States and leave your friend handcuffed to a mangrove," a nod back towards the unconscious Fawcett, "to explain to your brother just how we disappeared on his watch."   
  
  
Sherlock looks back, and then back to the Woman. The slightest of smirks appears on his lips, and his hands go back to his mobile. After exactly ten seconds, he says:  
  
"There are eight hospitals in Nassau capable of performing arterial surgery on a leg. Mycroft only has you scheduled for one."   
  
  
An answering smirk tugs at her lips, and Irene shifts, putting a little more pressure on the slowly bleeding (seeping, really) wound on her leg. Nassau continues to grow slowly on the horizon.  
  
"Might cause a bit of confusion, if the same surgery were to be suddenly scheduled at all eight. How long would it take him to figure it out, do you think?"   
  
  
"Shorter than your recovery time," Sherlock says, tapping away at the mobile. "But. There are several places that could all receive transfers from Nassau. If they all were scheduled transfers at the same time, that might cause even more confusion. By the time _that_ is sorted, you can be half a world away."   
  
  
Her smirk fades, and her expression grows carefully, composedly neutral. They are too much themselves to misspeak, too much themselves to be accidentally imprecise, and his implication is obvious.  
  
"And you'll be back to cleaning house, no doubt," she answers, the easy conspiratorial amusement gone from her voice. "Russia's cold this time of year, isn't it?"   
  
  
"Yes," Sherlock replies. "But the Baltschug Kempinski is warm enough, don't you think?"  
  
And, as far as he is still aware, his target has a long-standing room in the luxury hotel. Her lack of amusement makes him turn from his mobile, though.  
  
"Mycroft is following me," he says. "Not you. If we separate, it would be the easiest way to keep you away from him."   
  
  
"Are you so certain?" she answers without glancing over. Her attention remained on the helicopter's approach as she slowly guided them northeast for a slow approach to Nassau.   
  
"He was concerned enough to track me to Karachi despite the fact that I had nothing left with which to upend his little world."   
  
  
"Yes," he agreed. "I remember." He turns back to his mobile. She's right, of course. So long as the Woman is out there, Mycroft will want to know where she is. He'll want to protect his little brother, no matter how much Sherlock does not want to be protected. There was something freeing in being dead. Mycroft couldn't follow him, couldn't appear to make decisions for him. His influence couldn't ruin...this.  
  
"We can't separate yet at any rate," he says. "I've already booked us a room at the Place d'Armes."  
  
This is, of course, a complete lie. He simply doesn't want Mycroft to control this, to continue to control _him_ . He wants the holiday, wants the freedom.   
  
  
A raised eyebrow, and the faintest hint of a smile at her lips. "First the Baltschug Kempinski, now the Place D'Armes. Having trouble making up your mind?" she asks.  
  
The helicopter is approaching Nassau, and no doubt the hospital Mycroft Holmes had chosen would be on the lookout for a medical evacuation helicopter making an approach. Irene glances over at him, at the mobile in his hands. "Which hospital will it be?"   
  
  
"Place D'Armes," he says, definitively. "I have something arriving there that I need presently. Moscow can wait."  
  
He flips through his mobile. "Doctors Hospital," he says. "I'll make certain all of the hospitals are aware that they'll be expecting a helicopter."   
  
  
Another glance at his mobile, and the faint hint of a smile becomes an actual smirk again, pleased and anticipatory. She nods, and switches direction towards the hospital in question.  
  
As soon as she's pointed the helicopter in the correct heading, Irene grabs the bar Spaulding had used to wedge the cyclic in place and replaces it, gesturing to Sherlock.   
  
"Switch positions with me," she instructs. "It'd be best if the good Mr. Holmes," and there is a subtle twist to the way she says those words that makes it absolutely clear that she is speaking of the elder Holmes, "can't prove definitively that I was the pilot."   
  
  
He nods, but the slight twitch of his lips betrays the concern he's feeling. There is blood on the seat, and her dressings appear to have bled through. Too much movement---  
  
No. No, that's something to worry about later. They have to get to Nassau first.  
  
He picks up where she left off easily, remembering where her hands were and her feet were. He has the general concept down, but it's not as easy as learning how to drive a car.  
  
"You were going to tell me where you learned how to do this," he says.   
  
  
Her movements are careful, though she does sink a bit heavily into the opposite seat when she makes it. She still manages a smirk though, in response. "No, I was wondering why you never asked," she corrects. "I never said anything about telling you."   
  
  
"Are you expecting me to deduce the reason?" he asks.   
  
  
A small laugh. "Not at all," she answers, leaning back and briefly closing her eyes. The drugs are still in her system, and not having to move for the moment allows her to enjoy the temporary cessation of pain. "I was making conversation. Though I expect it wasn't as interesting as iguanas."   
  
  
He lets out a snort that sits where a laugh might be. "True."  
  
He considers what he knows about the Woman, and does some deductions. Something simple, to pass the time. Something to keep his mind off of the injury, off of how badly she's bleeding and how quickly she went limp in his arms before. _She is not dead._ He repeats this in his mind like a mantra.  
  
"Were it impressive, you'd have told me already," he says. "Or expected me to work it out. No, I think this is something mundane, something you're wrapping up in mystery in order to glamorize it. I would even go so far as to say you might have simply _taken classes_ in order to learn."   
  
  
Another laugh, and she opens her eyes. She is still pale from blood loss, but the ability to sit still, no longer needing to move constantly to pilot the helicopter, has helped immensely, drawing some of the tension from her shoulders as they approach the hospital in question.  
  
"Now you're trying to offend my pride so I'll give something away," she tsks. "It won't work."   
  
  
He lets out another snort. She does know him very well. He wonders if Mycroft might consider it _too_ well. He then remembers that he doesn't actually care what Mycroft thinks.  
  
"How do I land?" he asks, looking down at his feet awkwardly. He remembers, for the most part, her motions to land back in Hong Kong. All the same, he'd like to hear how, exactly, she _instructs_ him.   
  
  
She considers the area around them, a faint furrow on her brow, judging distance, direction. "Willing to take direction again, Mr. Holmes?" she teases. A gesture towards the lever at his left.  
  
"Ease back on the collective slowly, the lever at your side, not the one between your legs. Don't touch anything else. You should be able to feel the helicopter start to slow."  
  
It's hardly the smoothest, most accurate way of landing, but it is the easiest. And well, if anything happened, the hospital wasn't _that_ far away.   
  
  
He nods and does as she instructs. "You learned from someone who'd been flying for at least seven years."  
  
He is, after all, not content with simply having a general idea of how she learned. The helicopter dips awkwardly, but he rights it. His hands aren't shaking, and he reminds himself that he isn't at all terrified of crashing them. Terror is reserved for other things (bleeding legs and a strange jungle and and---)  
  
He can see staff appearing on the roof of the hospital. That's good. Ready to help. The Woman is far too pale for his liking.   
  
  
A shake of the head, but a curt one, because the motion disturbs her equilibrium. It's the descent, of course. She's used to her own steady hand at the controls, not his uncertain ones. Only the descent.  
  
She gestures at the back of the helicopter. "A dead man and three unconscious ones, one of them handcuffed to the chair. Will you even bother with a cover story?"   
  
  
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Sherlock says, turning to look at her. He switches his accent immediately, this time to a southern American again.  
  
"Terrorism. Such a shame."   
  
  
She watches the staff as they descend with a faint smile on her lips. "If you hold it steady a foot or two off the ground, one of them should be able to approach and come land it properly," she says.  
  
A part of her is glad to be here, to be in Nassau, because the slow bleed in her leg _is_ concerning, that it is a wound she cannot treat with basic first aid. Still, the idea of surgery, of relinquishing control, is one that she loathes. After all, she cannot shake the realization that with Mycroft Holmes' knowledge of their continued existence, that something has changed, that it might change again by the time she wakes.  
  
She glances at him, then quickly away again, to watch the staff approach. She doesn't reach for him, and her words are soft, nearly swallowed up by the rotor noise. "Stay with me."  
  
The 'please' that follows _is_ swallowed up by rotor noise. 


	21. Surgery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Stay with me_. A simple, unexpected request from Irene Adler to one Sherlock Holmes as they attempt to slip Mycroft's net despite their injuries. Will they succeed, or will failure haunt them both with promises made demanding to be kept?

Sherlock finds the insult he was going to comment on, the one where she said someone else should land the helicopter properly, is completely irrelevant after her next request.  _Stay._ He turns to look at her.  
  
He has been asked a lot of things from a lot of different people in his life, but no one has ever asked him to stay. Fix this, fix that, don't do this or that. But to _stay_ . He almost doesn't understand it. He fouls up the landing, and it's a bit harder than he'd prefer on the roof, but he's still trying to comprehend it exactly. Perhaps he already has, he realizes, as he's nodding.  
  
Of course he'll stay. For her.   
  
  
She cannot help the wince as the helicopter lands on the roof with a hard thud and a violent shudder. The hospital staff holds back, uncertain, and she reaches over, closing her hand over his on the collective lever at his side, and eases the throttle back completely. The shudder dies in the airframe as the rotor slows to a stop, and the sudden silence loud in the her ears.  
  
She lets go of his hand and nods towards the door as the hospital staff approaches. "I'll even play helpless, if you insist on playing the fretting American."   
  
  
His lips twitch into a smile. "You can play the dashing dominatrix when we get to Montreal," he says.  
  
He leans forward then, in a fit of sentiment, and presses his mouth to hers. It must be sentiment, he decides. He's not entirely certain he can handle quite this much sentiment in one sitting. The worrying, the concern, the change of plans when it comes to her.  
  
One of the hospital staff moves to open the Woman's door, and there's a stunned shout as one of them opens up the back door, finding the unconscious and dead back there.  
  
Sherlock breaks the brief kiss, and his accent is flawlessly American. "Thank god you're here," he says. "We didn't think we'd have enough fuel to land anywhere safe."   
  
  
She doesn't expect the kiss, and there is a split second of surprise before she returns it, and another moment of hesitation to draw her own disguise back around her when he pulls away.   
  
It takes less effort than she'd like to admit to appear wide-eyed and stunned, less effort to seem confused when the orderly pulls open her door and asks if she's alright.  
  
"Yes, I'm--" she manages in a slurred, American South drawl before he notices the dressing on her leg and the seeping blood. Irene winces as the orderly begins to shout for the gurney, and several of the other staff begin to 'assist' in easing her out of the cockpit, barking orders about operating rooms and surgeons.  
  
One of them is overenthusiastic, trying to reach around her to fit on an oxygen mask for some unfathomable reason, and Irene tries to wave him away, her eyes never leaving Sherlock's face.   
  
  
"Be careful," Sherlock says. "We were attacked, she's been injured---"  
  
This much is, of course, obvious, but he's playing the overly concerned American. The American part is easy, and the overly concerned---this is also easy. He climbs out of his own side, waving away the nurses as he tries to get to her. Something similar to panic seems to clutch at him as if---no, no, she's _fine_ , they're here. She has to be fine. But the way she's looking at him---  
  
Sentiment. Not at all an advantage.  
  
"Sir, we have to ask you some questions." He realizes that the voice next to him is that of someone in charge, such as a police officer or a security guard. (Police, most likely, due to the accent and the placement of the voice by his ear). Sherlock can't be bothered to look to the side to check, he keeps his eyes on the Woman's.   
  
  
They are loading her onto a stretcher, she realizes belatedly, and asking her questions. She needs to be communicative, she realizes, that these are not Mycroft Holmes' men who know exactly what had happened and what is necessary. She realizes this, and recognizes the look on Sherlock's face, and gives him the briefest of nods before breaking her gaze and leaning back on the stretcher.  
  
"We were attacked," she  echoes. "He was hurt in San Salvador, but they hijacked--" Her seeming acceptance of their aid only encourages the nurses, and Irene feels a prick in her arm. A moment of panic, but a glance down shows that it is only an IV being taped to her as the nurse by her side hooks up a bag of saline.   
  
"We'll have her in surgery in a minute," one of the more sympathetic nurses reassures Sherlock as the police officer continues to attempt to get his attention.   
  
  
"Listen to what she says!" Sherlock snaps. "You need to understand what's happened, she could tell you---"  
  
The officer puts a hand on Sherlock's shoulder and his fingers dig into Sherlock's injury. He lets out a short cry, and turns. The police officer isn't a police officer at all. It's the man from before, from the time with the Woman back in London. Dark skin, close-cropped hair, business suit. His Jamaican accent is perfect, of course, but he drops it the moment Sherlock sees him. Back to the Queen's English, and not even a twitch of expression shows on his face, even as his fingers dig into Sherlock's shoulder.  
  
"We're already aware of what's going on, Mr. Holmes," he says. "Your brother wants your shoulder checked while she's in for surgery."  
  
"I don't need to be checked," Sherlock snaps. "But I imagine he knows that as well." He nods to the Woman's gurney. "I'm going to stay with her."  
  
"No, Mr. Holmes," the man says. "You're not."  
  
He hears the click of the handcuffs before he feels the cold metal around his wrists. He's led away, down to a different hospital room. To wait.   
  
  
She looks up, and the nurse, or the orderly, she isn't certain at the moment which of them it was, flashes her a cold smile, utterly unlike the other tensely busy men and women hovering about her. He is familiar, with his short blond hair and pale blue eyes, but it is hard to remember, hard to think where she'd seen him before, and it was hard to muster up the panic that had seized her just a moment ago.  
  
The stretcher moves, and she sinks back against it. Her eyes are heavy, and the last thought she manages before the sedative in the IV drip takes effect is that she _does_ recognize the orderly with the cold smile.  
  
 _One more word out of you – just one – and I will decorate that wall with the insides of your head. That, for me, will not be a hardship._   
  
  


He scowls as he's handcuffed to a bed, scowls as his stitches are replaced and a new dressing added to his shoulder. He scowls as he waits, because he knows who he is waiting for. Eight hospitals, and no doubt Mycroft Holmes had prepared all of them for this possibility. _Damn._  
  
He waits for the nurse to step out, and he twists his hand within the handcuff, popping his thumb out of joint and releasing his hand. He scrambles to his feet and peers out of the hospital room. He knows where the surgical theaters are, he knows how to get there. He waits for Mycroft's man to look in the opposite direction, and shoots across the floor, quiet and quick, despite the injury and the exhaustion. Someone calls out something behind him.  
  
He turns, and the bay with operating theaters is ahead. A gurney is taken out of one of them, immediately replaced with a dark-skinned girl (French, on holiday, stung by a Portuguese Man-of-War, had bad reaction). Out of another theater steps another of Mycroft's men. The American. It's quite the reunion. What's he doing in there?  
  
 _How ya feelin'?  
  
Like putting a bullet in your brain._  
  
Sherlock takes a step towards the theater, and a hand reaches out for his shoulder---not the injured shoulder this time. The grip is secure, and Sherlock doesn't need to turn to know who it is.  
  
"What's he doing here, Mycroft?" Sherlock says, keeping his eyes ahead. "He can't be here for old time's sake."  
  
"No," the elder Holmes replies. "He was here to watch over Irene Adler's surgery."  
  
Sherlock turns to look back at his brother. Mycroft hasn't been sleeping, it's obvious from the red tinge on his eyes and the dark circles. He's been self-medicating his anxiety with food again, he must have gained two stone since Sherlock saw him last. Not that Sherlock has bothered wanting to see his brother. Mycroft's betrayal is the only reason he's away from London at all.  
  
"I'm assuming he's leaving because the doctors are telling him to," Sherlock says. "So they can begin surgery."  
  
Mycroft's expression is one of exasperation, as though Sherlock is again the five-year-old who refuses to see what Mycroft considers completely obvious. "No," he says. "The surgery is over, Sherlock."  
  
Sherlock shakes his head. "Not possible, she hasn't been in there thirty minutes."  
  
"The repair work done in San Salvador was sub-par, Sherlock, and the tearing she sustained on the helicopter caused excessive bleeding," Mycroft says. "You don't have to bother explaining what happened up there. I glanced at the recorded data, it all fits into place. Except for your involvement with Vincent Spaulding, that is."  
  
Fits into place. No, no, it doesn't fit into place. Mycroft is changing the subject, going on to things he considers more important, when Sherlock wants to see the Woman's surgery files. He wants to know what happened. (Deductive reasoning places the answers very carefully in front of him, though. The response from Mycroft, the changed subject, the fact that Mycroft is preventing him from moving forward...)  
  
"She was fine going in there," Sherlock says. "You can't tell me she wasn't, Mycroft, I saw---"  
  
"You saw a pale, injured, very sick woman with a high tolerance for pain," Mycroft snaps. "She was _fooling_ you if you believe she was _fine_ , Sherlock."  
  
Use of the past tense. Exasperation at sentiment. Sherlock feels a wave of nausea hit him. He steels his face and looks back at the operating theater. He grinds his teeth and takes in a breath. All hints of his internal---his internal--- _pain_ are gone from his voice.  
  
"Where is she, Mycroft?"  
  
Mycroft's voice at his shoulder is soft. If it were not Mycroft, Sherlock might even think he was being sympathetic. The hand is back on Sherlock's shoulder. Gentle. False sympathy.  
  
"Sherlock," he says. "Irene Adler succumbed to her injuries before the surgery could begin. She's dead." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for spending another wild ride with us! We hope you enjoyed it, and the next installment of _Death Takes A Holiday_ will resume after a short hiatus to catch our collective breaths!


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